


uptown funk

by woodswit



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bedsharing, F/M, and green dresses, angst and silliness, another staple of the WCU, filled with references to very real people, hockey player AU...again, if you are a loser like me you will find them and roll your eyes at me, multiple recurring elements of the so-called 'WCU' are present here, sansa is a gossip columnist, someday i will make a taxonomy, someone please take my internet connection AWAY, this is utter trash, very on-brand for me tbh, yes i did work in the mini cooper for those following along
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:14:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29212515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodswit/pseuds/woodswit
Summary: Just get famous hockey player Jon Snow's attention, and find out who he's dating. Sansa, covering for Myranda, tells herself she can do that. She can get Jon Snow's attention, no problem!(Myranda probably didn't mean she should do it via throwing her Manolo at his head.)
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 1028
Kudos: 763
Collections: adventures of the mini cooper





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> any similarities you may see to real people are completely and absolutely intentional. this is my shameless self-indulgence and you all have the misfortune of reading it. i regret everything and apologize for nothing. cheers!

"Are you in yet?" 

Myranda breaks down in another hacking fit of coughing, and Sansa holds her mobile away from her ear. 

"No. I told you, I only just got in the Uber," Sansa reminds her. "Go back to sleep, okay?"

"I—can't—" She surrenders to another fit before returning. "Please tell me you're not dressed like a nun. He's a hockey player—he's not going to take a single look at you if you're not, you know, tits out." 

Sansa rolls her eyes. She has literally never been ‘tits out’, and judging by the guest list for this party, she really doubts that displaying her own assets (as Myranda calls hers) is going to help her stand out tonight. There will be supermodels, and movie stars, and wunderkinds in attendance; she might as well be wearing an invisibility cloak.

"I don't _need_ to put it all on display. You know my hypothesis," Sansa says instead, more politely than she feels. Myranda is technically her manager, after all, and Sansa is always mindful of hierarchy. Oh, people say that power structures don't exist, but thanks to some key formative experiences, Sansa has always been keenly aware of power: of what it means to have it and what it means to lack it; of what it does to people; of the ways in which people obtain it. 

"Not this again. He's _not gay_ , Giantsbane is just his beloved teammate," Myranda fires back. "They've won two Cups together; of course they love each other."

"He literally kissed his neck after a goal—"

“—That was an accident! _You_ try going in to hug someone a foot taller than you on skates, and we'll see how it goes—" 

Myranda succumbs to another coughing fit. "He's not gay," she reiterates when she's done, "and he's got a secret girlfriend, and we are going to find out who she is tonight." 

" _We_ are?" Sansa raises her brows skeptically. 

"Go team," Myranda says, earning a laugh. "Okay, _you_ are, yes. In my stead, as I lay here dying of flu. I couldn't hope for a better proxy. Just remember that that is your objective tonight. We need this story, Sansa. Readership has been down… really down. Like, might-not-have-a-job-next-month kind of down.”

Myranda lets this news sink in, and Sansa’s belly clenches in fear. She didn’t know it was that bad. “Look. Everyone else will be covering the other big celebs there, but no one will be brave enough to work on Jon Snow tonight." 

Sansa's intuition is tingling.

“…Um. Brave?" she ventures.

"He's, you know."

Myranda doesn't explain further, and Sansa waits. "He's. Kind of. You know. Look, he's famous, right?" 

"I don't follow hockey," Sansa sniffs, not adding that she objects to it for the violence, the concussions, and the sexist costumes of the ice girls who roll around the rink in hot pants with brooms. She senses that Myranda has left out a key detail until now, one that must be important, given how her voice just squeaked. 

"Okay, but even you know who he is," she says in a harried voice.

Sansa primarily knows who Jon Snow is because of Robb's obsession with hockey (and Arya's), but also because Myranda has a blurry picture of him taken from a YouTube clip, sweaty from a gym workout, beneath which she has scrawled YOU BETTER WERK BITCH in pink, bubbly handwriting. And thanks to her googling on the way over, she knows he’s captain of the Direwolves, plays center—whatever that means—and is known for something called ‘hooking.’ "Look, he's just kind of known for being a dick with the media, alright? He's so famous that he gets harassed _all_ the time by the media, and he _hates_ it. He gives canned responses to even the most basic questions; looks like he wants to die at post-game interviews; barely attends any events unless he has literally no choice, avoids the paparazzi like the plague... He is _definitely_ hiding something.” 

_Gay_ , Sansa thinks, but she knows better than to say it again. _Definitely gay and keeping it quiet_ ; it's not like hockey fans are known for their tolerance. "I can hear you thinking, and just stop it. He's straight, he's got a girlfriend, and you're going to find out who she is. He can't be gay," she mutters, more to herself than to Sansa. "I've fantasized too much at this point, it would feel like a breakup. It would be humiliating... in my mind."

"Right."

"This conversation is derailing. Just do what I said, okay?" 

"Of course. Feel better, Myranda. I'll email you the article by breakfast tomorrow," Sansa reassures her ill manager, then rings off, trying not to be too nauseated by the new pressure. 

She didn’t know her job was in such jeopardy, but of course, it really isn’t that much of a surprise. Journalism in general has been down, and it’s not like most people would even consider her a journalist. She can’t think about that now, though—can’t think about the prospect of applying for unemployment, of hoping for—at best—a bunch of dissatisfying freelance jobs that lead to nothing, of explaining to people that she's just taking time off, might take some courses... She can't think about explaining to people that she failed in _this_ way, too. 

Perfect timing—her Uber is just rolling up to Stag & Ivy, the highly swanky restaurant where artist Renly Baratheon is holding his star-studded birthday bash. 

("forty!" he had tweeted despairingly, earlier, "might as well just, like, die!")

Because Renly Baratheon enjoys attention and has a friendly relationship with the media, the online gossip outlet that Sansa works for has been invited. He favors their site, The Vale, for its feminist spin and its inclusivity and progressive coverage, and only invited a few other outlets with similar leanings, so this is a coveted coverage opportunity and, for once, they are coming out ahead of the major tabloids. 

(It is even more dire than she realized that she not fuck this golden opportunity up.)

Stag & Ivy is on the top floor of one of the tallest and most glittering buildings in King's Landing, and a bouncer is stationed beneath the understated awning, letting in very few people. Sansa has the impression of lots of lean, bare legs ending in red-soled shoes; shiny hair; crisp suiting; perfect smiles. Her skin prickles with self-consciousness as she tips the Uber driver and prepares to step out among them. She works hard on her own upkeep but she's not a celebrity by any means, and honestly, ever since the divorce—

—Well, anyway. It doesn't really matter what she looks like, because she's a _journalist_ and she's here to get a _story,_ not to appear beautiful and shiny on all the right Instagram accounts. If she does her job right, she'll be forgettable—an empathetic presence to a lot of narcissists drunk on Dom. 

(This is her superpower. Narcissists love Sansa, because she listens and she is a mirror, bouncing all the things they love about themselves back on them. And this hockey player is just another narcissist, right?)

(And fine, yes, sometimes it does make her feel like her identity is defined by how well she reflects the shitty people around her, but at least she gets money for it.)

(For now, anyway.)

"Sansa Stark!" squeals a voice, just as Sansa is setting one jade green Manolo-shod foot on the curb. It's Margaery Tyrell, model and noted player of the paparazzi. Sansa interviewed her last year for a long-form feature, and experienced the model's dazzle in real life. It's yet another testament to Margaery's people skills, that she remembers the face and name of a very small-time journalist who interviewed her a year ago. 

"Margaery!"

Margaery breaks off from her clique of long-legged friends to envelop Sansa in a rose-infused hug. Margaery looks golden and gleaming, like she's just stepping off a yacht off the coast of Dorne, leading Sansa to very briefly and privately question just how straight she herself is. 

"You look fab. Ugh, I hate you, I love your shoes, they're so cool," Margaery confides, like she's saying something scandalous. " _Such_ a classic, I love that you didn't go try-hard like I did." 

Bemused, Sansa allows herself to be led inside Stag & Ivy on Margaery's slender arm. "Please tell me you're not working tonight, right?" she asks as they step onto the elevator, as though they are good friends and have long established that Sansa is a workaholic. Sansa takes note; it's an effective technique because she already feels closer to Margaery. Everyone loves to be perceived as harder-working, as more special, as somehow superior.

"Actually, yes, I am," she admits. The elevator is rising, the lights of King's Landing getting smaller and more blurred the higher they go, and then there's a cool _ping_ and the glass doors are sliding apart. They are at the top floor; funk is blaring; everything smells like Tom Ford and gum and whiskey. "I'm covering Jon Snow tonight," she says, because Margaery likes to be known for how in-the-know she is and how many contacts her mobile has. 

“Oh, _Jon_!" Margaery squeals as she slaps Sansa’s arm, just as Sansa guessed she might. "Oh my gosh, he is the absolute sweetest. I mean, like, not to most people," she adds, and Sansa thinks of how Myranda's voice squeaked earlier, "but if you get to know him? Total sweetheart." 

"Interesting. I've heard he's rough around the edges." 

(She thinks of the Youtube videos she watched earlier when she was learning more about him: clips of his best games and most impressive goals. 'Rough around the edges' does not quite sum up Jon Snow—he is a demon on the ice, even to her inexpert gaze. He is utterly precise, yet unstoppable; he is a _force._ He is all control until he's not, and any time the camera zooms in on his solemn face, his grey eyes are trained, calculating, on the other team.)

Margaery loops her arm in Sansa's again; she offers a sly grin, elbowing Sansa. 

"I _know,_ right? Like he could totally rail you against a countertop. Don’t worry, I’ve thought about it too.”

"Er, well actually, more like he has a problem with the media," Sansa says, wishing she didn't blush so easily. Her face has quite a lot of effective foundation on it tonight, but her neck is molten, too, and she hates to give herself away. 

"Oh, that he _definitely_ does," Margaery whispers, "but he and I are totally cool. I can introduce you!" she says brightly. 

Sansa cannot believe her luck. How much gratitude should she show? She meets Margaery's doe-like eyes as she tries to read her. 

"That," she says, "would be incredible. You know everyone." 

"Oh, you're the actual cutest, did you know that? It's just because he's close with my brother, you know? He really took Loras under his wing when he was drafted, really made him feel like part of the team, even though he’s, you know, _out_ and openly dating Renly,” Margaery reflects with a sigh. "Let's go find him, come on."

Stag & Ivy is all rich colors, dark wood, low lighting—like a wealthy man's study. The room is not yet packed, and the air has the hushed tension of the moment before the gun goes off at a race, even though the music is already loud. A few smaller groups stand by the enormous windows, looking at the expansive, glittering views of King's Landing, and other groups are clumped around the mahogany bar.

Sansa spots a number of A- and B-listers: there's Marillion, the DJ-turned-popstar, looking ridiculous in a neon pink blazer and an absurd fedora; there's Renly's older brother, Robert, former footballer gone to seed, red-faced and surrounded by nineteen-year-olds in crop tops. Renly himself won't arrive until later, likely drunk on champagne and covered in glitter. And then there’s—

No. 

_No._

_How_ did he get an invite? How is he here? How? Why? Sansa’s legs go numb down to her Manolos and she finds herself gripping Margaery’s arm as bile rises in her throat. There he is, talking to one of Robert’s nineteen year olds; he’s done an ill-advised, nineties sort of thing with his hair and she registers this and then can’t believe she is noticing his _hair,_ what the _hell_ is _wrong_ with her—

“Oh my gosh, there he is, I _knew_ he’d be here early,” Margaery hisses, pulling on Sansa’s arm. “He’s over there with Tormund and my brother, let’s get him now before he gets too antisocial, come on.” 

Sansa’s eyes blur with tears and she blinks them away rapidly. _Mirror,_ she tells herself, _you’re a mirror. No one knows_ you, _they just know their own reflection._ There’s a lump in her throat and her inner world is crumbling, but she pastes a smile on for Margaery. 

“Lead the way,” she says, fisting her hand around her clutch to hide how it shakes. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as previously mentioned, any similarities you see to real people are fully intentional. don't @ me!!

Margaery pulls Sansa away from the stage of her horror, and Sansa tries to mentally switch gears. Jon Snow. Right. 

Her entire online outlet is relying on her to do this—but what if there's no story? 

(She thinks of the man she watched YouTube clips of earlier, the man Myranda has been gushing about for as long as Sansa has worked for her. _He can do **damage**_ , Myranda had swooned recently, clicking out of the hockey game she had been streaming as they were starting a meeting. _Is that... a good thing?_ Sansa had wondered, and Myranda had looked at her like she'd lost her mind.) 

(What is the story she's going to tell about Jon Snow? She needs to focus on this, not on certain men who shall not be named.)

(So what does she know? He's focused. He's distressed by the media, and by any attention at all. She thinks that Giantsbane—his alternate—thrives on the attention, as far as she can tell; if the stadium were empty, Giantsbane would simply say 'fuck it' and go home. But Jon Snow does not care if anyone is watching him; he does not play hockey to enjoy the fruits of his status, but instead, for some other reason. Maybe it's a competitive streak, maybe he just loves the game. But he's not there for the attention.) 

"Wait," Sansa says, pulling Margaery back. "Really quickly—can you give me more on him?" 

To her credit, Margaery looks genuinely thoughtful. She tilts her head to the side, lush brown locks swaying. "Just a perspective. I've only got the one shot; I want to make sure I know all the angles going in." 

"Honestly?" Margaery lowers her voice and steps in closer. "This is just me, but like I said earlier, I will always _adore_ him for how he welcomed Loras. He's captain, you know, and what he says goes on that team. They don't call him 'coach-killer' for nothing—"

"—They _what_?" Sansa frantically types out her notes on her mobile, glancing up at Margaery. She didn't see anything about this in her research.

"Coach-killer. The coaches never own the Direwolves; Jon Snow does, and any coach that doesn't understand that? They're out. What I mean is, he has the final say on who gets traded, or what the locker room culture is like, and he could have very easily just left Loras to fend for himself, but he didn't. From day one, he made it, like, super clear that there wouldn't be a word said on Loras being gay. Loras said no one dared, that everyone was super respectful of him from the beginning. And not all of those guys are like that, Sansa. Loras put up with a lot of crap throughout his career. When he was playing with the Suns down in Dorne, it was a totally different story—they were always messing with his stick, always tripping him, always pulling some kind of crap in the locker room, not involving him on plays... I was actually legit scared for him sometimes down there."

"So he's progressive," Sansa reframes it, typing in her notes app, and Margaery shrugs. Sansa is surprised to see that her eyes are bright with unshed tears; she did not realize Margaery was so protective of her brother. 

"I have no idea about his politics, but he's got very clear morals—and he obviously knows how to negotiate, given how much power he's had in the team over the years." 

She feels a ripple of interest that she quickly squashes. She is not going to take an interest in a hockey player, for god's sake. She's too old for that kind of nonsense. 

"And he's a good captain, it sounds like." 

"I think so. From what Loras says, he's a totally different person during practice. I think when he was first drafted, he was kind of known for being a brat? Really sulky, always getting into arguments with the refs, not playing as a team, ignoring the coaches, basically bullying the other players... He grew up with the Direwolves, really, and now I think he sees it as his responsibility to be a good captain." 

"He's a few years older than a lot of the other players," Sansa points out, recalling a clip from a recent interview where Snow was clearly a little testy about his age. It is one of the threads she plans on pulling on, if she has the chance, but she might as well check and see if there's anything to it. "Anything there, as far as you know?"

"Think about it, Sansa," Margaery says wryly. "How do _you_ feel on your birthdays nowadays? Pro athletes have even firmer expiration dates than women do. Of _course_ there's something there. And it doesn't help that he and Tormund totally rely on each other, and Tormund's a couple years older than him, and nowhere near as motivated as him. Once Tormund goes..." Margaery grimaces. "Is he still going to be the presence on the ice that he's always been? He's not nineteen anymore like the rest of them are. I'm, like, sure he's wondering; the same way I'm worried about how many years I've got left before I have to start getting Botox." 

Then she grins. "But don't tell him I said any of that. Loras says he's still acting like his age isn't even a question. He's in denial, you know how men are." 

_He's in denial about a few things, I'd bet,_ Sansa thinks, but she doesn't say it. 

"You are, as always, amazing," Sansa tells the model, and she means it. Margaery winks coyly. 

"No, you are. Come on, let's introduce you two. Just play along, alright? I've got a plan to slip you under the radar."

Sansa bites her tongue on the ethics of lying about whether she's with the media; when the time comes— _if_ the time comes—she will correct any assumptions. After all, the Vale will be in way worse trouble if she violates those codes. Jon Snow is easily rich enough to sue their little online outlet down to nothing. 

The stupidity and futility of this assignment hit her like a wave as she begins following Margaery through the crowd. She is about to try and get a story out of a man who is infamously hostile, infamously unpredictable, who despises her profession on principle and can afford to ruin her, and the people she works with, on a whim. 

Not to mention who else is here. _God_. Bother upon bother; once tonight is all over she is going to have one hell of a glass of wine and do her most expensive, most precious sheet mask. And she's going to light the expensive candle, dammit. 

"There he is. He's the one with his back to you, the one with the man bun. The tall one is Tormund Giantsbane, and the other guy is my brother."

Jon Snow is known for his hair—dark hair pulled away from his jaw for post-game briefings; curls that cling to his neck sweatily, just visible at the edge of his helmet, during games.

(Not that she knows. This is all, word for word, from Myranda. She would not have even noticed his hair, otherwise. She absolutely did not notice how those curls cling to his skin, or how nice his neck looks when it's slick with sweat.)

And she recognizes the plain man bun at once. Sansa can't tell if it's carefully or carelessly styled; it looks like it's still wet—like he took a shower, changed into his suit, and booked it over to the party without much thought, but Sansa knows famous men well enough to know that that could easily be the result of hours of work and enough hair product to pay her rent. His suit is dark and plain, but immaculately cut, hanging elegantly on his svelte, dangerous frame. Myranda said the well-known stylist Varys often works with the men of the Direwolves, and right now that seems pretty obvious. 

Is she literally, actually nervous? Seriously? Her belly clenches as she watches him shift his weight and laugh at something Giantsbane has said; he looks down into his drink, and she can see him in profile as he crinkles his eyes at the corners and laughs quietly into his drink, shaking his head. He seems so benign right now, quiet and reserved but not a man to be feared. Somehow all the hours she has lost to listening Myranda wax poetic about his complicated nature—feral ice-demon meets responsible good boy—add up to this. She is actually nervous to talk to a guy that probably can't string more than a sentence together, judging by his monosyllabic and hostile post-game interviews. _He can do **damage** ,_ Myranda's croon echoes in her mind.

(She's just thrown off her game tonight, for ... reasons. It's fine. She's not nervous.) 

The ginger-haired man, Tormund Giantsbane, glimpses her over Jon Snow's svelte shoulder and winks at her. He's dressed in an elegant and daring plum-colored suit that is utterly at odds with his wild, unkempt ginger beard, more evidence of Varys' stylish hand. Beside him, Loras languishes against the bar, looking unbearably fresh-faced and young, like he ought to be in a boyband, his rosy cheeks framed by light brown curls that are even prettier than Margaery's. He is probably too young for Renly, but he seems independent enough.

"Hey boys!" Margaery drags Sansa forward just as Jon Snow turns, rather grudgingly, around.

Their eyes meet.

Sansa experiences a brief shock of heat that she will examine later. Myranda has played up his good looks, she tells herself—she is unimpressed by the soft grey eyes made compelling by the thin scar over his brow; or by the pretty mouth balanced by rough dark stubble. He is otherwise unremarkable, she tells herself, and up close, he looks kind of bitchy, like he's someone who is usually in a bad mood. "Sansa, this is my brother, and Jon Snow, and Tormund Giantsbane. Boys, this is my _absolute_ BFF Sansa! We've known each other for, like, forever," she gushes. "Shouldn't she be a model? She should, like, totally be a model."

Jon Snow raises a brow at her as he looks her over—like he sees through the very obvious lie and is saying nothing of it, like he cannot even be bothered to call her out.

( _Asshole,_ she thinks.)

"Nice to meet you," Sansa greets them politely. Margaery laughs, as though she's said something hilarious.

"She is, like, the biggest hockey fan, so I just had to introduce her! "

"Really." Jon looks down at his (untouched) drink, then looks back up at Sansa, meeting her eyes in an electric gaze. She wants to look away—his gaze is too direct, and she keeps (inconveniently) thinking of Margaery's comment about him railing her against a countertop and feels like it's visible on her face—but she forces herself to maintain the gaze. He will not do any damage to her.

(No man will, ever again.)

"Really," Sansa says, "but I don't know anything about the game. It's so embarrassing." 

She tries to read how these words affect him—is he bored by her ditziness, or has she invoked that masculine need to over-explain everything? But she cannot tell—he simply is returning her gaze steadily, daringly, accusingly, disdainfully.

"Luckily for you, there's Google," Snow says evenly, and then—she cannot believe it!—he turns away from her, facing Loras again, who looks a little amused and a little exasperated by his captain's rude behavior. 

Sansa stands there, humiliated, with Margaery still clutching her arm, as Snow and Loras launch into a discussion of some other sport—maybe football. 

"Snow doesn't know how to talk to beautiful fiery-haired goddesses," Giantsbane informs them with a grin that is oddly sexy, like he's a very stylish lumberjack, and Sansa swiftly changes tacks. Fine, if Jon Snow won't talk to her—apparently his ice-husband will. "What are you drinking?" Tormund asks. 

Sansa gives him her most winning smile. 

"What do you recommend?" 

Margaery tactfully slinks away, leaving Sansa at the bar with Tormund. The room is growing more crowded, pushing her uncomfortably close to Jon. She turns her back on him and faces Tormund, who leans on the bar and motions for the bartender's attention, but as they are jostled by other guests vying for drinks, her back brushes his several times, and she feels her face go molten at the feel of the crisp suiting kissing her bare shoulder blades, the bump of hard muscle shifting beneath the fabric as they touch. He's going to think she's doing it on purpose, so she steps closer to Tormund, but that feels inappropriate too, as Tormund simply takes up three times as much space as he ought. 

(And all the while, _he_ lingers at the edge of her vision, making her feel sick each time she remembers he is there. The girl he is talking to looks so young. So young.)

"A martini for the lady," Tormund calls. His voice is lightly accented, and it's loud, too. He is decidedly not her type—too broad, too big, too bearded, too much—but somehow it kind of works. A wild thought occurs to her, that she could just sleep with this professional athlete as a last gasp of bad decisions before returning to her life as a hermit and her (likely) dwindling career. Out with a bang, literally. 

(Maybe she's been spending too much time with Myranda.) 

"He's lucky to have you," Sansa says after the bartender turns away to make her drink, and Tormund grins. "To handle the women he offends."

"Oh, he's terrible with women, the stories I could tell you," Tormund laughs, waving his hand. Sansa raises her brows. 

"I can tell—no girlfriend," she ventures, tossing out the line playfully. Tormund seems unexpectedly savvy—he doesn't speak immediately; he eyes her carefully, shrewdly. His media training has apparently paid off. 

"No girlfriend," he agrees cautiously, passing the martini to her, and Sansa takes a sip of it. "Not to say there haven't been women," he amends, but of course, he's not really telling her anything. 

"Isn't he ready to settle down? Aren't you, for that matter?" she asks innocently. Tormund chuckles, shaking his head. 

"Ah, you journalists always want to talk about how old we are," he says fondly. "And you always want to talk about why Snow doesn't have a girlfriend." 

"Well, you never give us answers," Sansa points out, refusing to miss a beat or seem remotely daunted. He is smarter than she was prepared for—what does that mean for Jon Snow? Is he more than a (badly-tempered) meathead too? "We're going to keep asking until we get an answer." 

"Or maybe you're trying to make a story where there isn't one," Tormund says, his voice firm, and Sansa has the sense of him gently closing a door in her face. 

Okay. That does it—Jon Snow is _definitely_ hiding something. 

"You're right," she admits, and she takes another sip of her martini, stalling for time. "It's just hard to resist the mystery of you both. You're not on social media, you don't make post-game statements, you don't give us insight to your personal lives." She takes another sip. "If you threw us a bone every once in a while, we might back off."

"Oh, I've got a bone for you," he says with a grin, making her choke on her martini, and then he's roaring with laughter. She feels Jon's back brush hers again, like he's twisting around, and she stubbornly refuses to look back. 

"Honestly, I don't care that much about all that gossip," she lies, sidestepping the flirty comment. "What I'm really wondering is, what drives you to play?" 

Tormund shrugs. 

"I've played since I could walk," he says honestly.

"You don't seem as obsessive about it as Jon." 

"I am not," he agrees slowly, his blue eyes lingering on Jon's back, over her shoulder. "Why do you want to know what drives us? What does it matter?" 

"Stories start with a question," Sansa explains. "I care about stories—I don't care about hockey. I find it sexist, and violent," she admits, and Tormund grins, unbothered by her assessment. "But I suppose I see a question around both of you—"

"—Sexist?" blurts a voice. Sansa glances back, and Jon's dangerously close to her. When she turns, her elbow brushes his upper arm. They are too close, and she can smell the starch from his shirt, the clean green scent of his soap ("I just want to know what he _smells_ like," Myranda had sighed earlier. Now she can tell her.) He's still faced away from her, but he's twisted around, bracing an arm on the bar, and she notes, with irritation, that his hands are nice. They look ...competent. "How the hell is it sexist?" 

"In all the best ways," Tormund sighs happily. "The ice girls!" 

Jon's features screw up as he regards Sansa. 

"Seriously. _That's_ your big problem with hockey—ice girls?" 

"They are kind of gross," Loras hedges, but Jon ignores him. 

"Not just the ice girls, but they're the tip of the iceberg, so to speak," she says, and she hears Tormund snort, 'oh, she's clever, too!' But Jon Snow doesn't look amused. "The culture of toxic masculinity, the violent fights, the—"

"—Do you even hear yourself?" Jon interrupts. Now they're facing each other. "Fighting is now banned. It almost never happens."

"You sat out two seasons for concussions. I guess those happened on their own?" she shoots back. Her heart is racing; she's got him now. His brow twitches like he's either furious or amused and she can't tell and the fact that she can't tell is sort of exciting. That and the heat from the martini is sitting pleasantly in the pit of her belly and just at her throat, and somehow this is related to her observation that his shoulders are _good_ in that suit. "Not to mention you obviously feel like you have to hide something about yourself, since you won't even sign up for Twitter—"

"—You think because I don't spam the world with my most inane thoughts each day, I'm hiding something?" he scoffs. "I do partnerships and sponsorships all the time. I'm constantly on camera."

(She didn't expect him to use a word like _inane_. Score one for the meathead.) 

"I think you do those sponsorships, like the Nike one where they filmed you working out in your home, to get everyone off your back and project a certain persona," she counters. His eyes look darker now; he tilts his head, regarding her in something like outrage, or indignation. "I think—"

But that's when she locks eyes with _him_ , just a few paces past Jon Snow, and whatever else she was going to say dies in her throat. Her mouth goes dry. "I—I'm going to powder my—" she squeaks, not even bothering to eke out the full archaic excuse—

—and she turns on one very high Manolo, and she flees.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i honestly don't even know why i am allowed to do this 
> 
> this is angsty and crack-filled and ridiculous, per usual don't @ me for my many crimes

"Sansa?" she hears Tormund ask, but she's already slipping between the throngs of people like a silvery fish, instinctively heading for the hallway with the restrooms. 

She turns the corner and her jade green heels click on the marble floor as she fumbles her way toward the ladies' room. How funny, she thinks in an underwater, remote sort of way, that she's wearing these shoes tonight.

The day she bought them, she had just finished a workout class and had been looking sort of messy and gross in her leggings and old North Face jacket, her hair both frizzy and sweaty in its tight ponytail. She had intended on just grabbing a coffee before heading back to her new, unfurnished studio apartment to work more on an article, but she had walked past the Neiman Marcus window and had lingered, as though in a spell, her eye caught (as usual) by the warm light and the glitter.

It had been January, just after New Year's, and the window display had glittered with a winter wonderland theme. Rock salt had crusted the pavements and everyone around her was in black and grey, everything caked with salt and looking the shabbier for it. 

She had been fighting a strangely black mood ever since the divorce. She had known she ought to be happy and instead she felt empty. All that fighting, all that pain, and maybe the idealist in her had expected her Prince Charming to burst forth as soon as she had signed the papers; the silly little girl in her had expected everything to suddenly click into place, as though the divorce had been the one pin holding all of the cogs from turning the way they ought to. A month later and no cogs seemed to be turning right—she was too old, she felt, to not have any furniture of her own; she was making startlingly little money for her age and experience—and she was beginning to wonder if she had blown her chances at happiness. Like there were only so many tickets available, and she had taken hers and wasted them... on _him_ , of all the people to waste such a ticket on.

It had been a sooty little thought, crouching at the edge of her consciousness all month, and she had been telling herself it was just the inevitable post-Christmas doldrums she felt every year—she had resented the thought in herself. Because there is a part of Sansa that she knows, that she treasures: that she always has hope. She cannot be crushed by disappointment; no matter how heartbreaking it might be, she always believes there is some magical thing waiting just ahead, just past the next signpost, just around the next turn. She cannot help but assume that her life will be beautiful. 

And she had seen the shoes hanging in the display—jade green, so bold and impetuous in their refusal to be a traditional or classic color, yet just as elegant and just as cool as a navy or blush-toned heel might have been. And she had stood there, contemplating these elegant shoes, representing the life of a woman that Sansa suspected she might want to be, and contemplating her own current dismal hopelessness. She had seen her reflection—bedraggled and mismatched but still fighting—and had watched it flash as she moved, her vision flashing between her dismal present and her jade-green possibilities. 

She had had just enough in her bank account to buy them, and until her next paycheck she had eaten ramen and avoided using heat or electricity. She had told no one of the decision; any sane person would have counseled her that these were an utterly frivolous purchase, especially for a woman financially crippled by a hostile divorce with no windfall in sight. But in all that time that she had bent over her laptop in her very cold, very unfurnished apartment, typing away at more articles and think pieces than she had ever written, she had known the shoes were in their dust bag, in the perfect box—lying in wait for the life she was building for herself. She had kept them on their own shelf in her closet, and sometimes she would open the door and just peer at them, like checking on a seed she had tenderly planted, watching her new life grow.

And now she is at least somewhat that woman she dreamed she might be—even if it is ever so precarious—and now he's here again, and she just _cannot_. 

The attendant usually in fancy bathrooms is absent—likely one of Renly's stipulations, if she had to make a guess—and for the moment she is alone among the warm marble and the celadon walls and the large fern in the chinoiserie pot, her Manolos clacking on the floor as she stumbles to the center of the bathroom and wonders if she is going to be sick. 

He knows she is here, and either he will do as he did at the height of their marriage, and utterly ignore her, or he will do as he did toward the end, and attempt to destroy her. And that she doesn't know, and can't plan, is driving her—

"Sansa?"

Joffrey Baratheon—music producer riding on Marillion's coattails and his family's fame with no talent of his own—is standing there in the doorway, and oh, _god,_ the nineties thing he's done with his hair is _even worse_ up close. When he proposed to her at the green age of twenty two, he had looked startlingly like his footballer uncle Jaime Lannister—golden-haired and golden-limbed, fine-featured and square-jawed—but in the years since he has begun to crumple in ways that Jaime Lannister hasn't. He's a bit jowly around the jawline—too much drinking, too little sleep—and there are hollows beneath his eyes from too many nights of coke and nineteen-year-old models. The hairstyle is probably intended to mask his thinning hairline, but it can't quite hide it. The ghost of his former handsome self lingers about him, and it seems like he is doing his very best to grasp it and hold it to himself. He is as outwardly pathetic as he always has been inside.

"Joffrey." She resists the urge to back up. There is a very good chance she is going to turn around and empty her stomach into that potted fern if he doesn't leave soon. "You have a restraining order," she reminds him, clenching her fists. He scoffs. 

"And yet you're at my uncle's party," he sneers. She doesn't point out that Renly hates Joffrey and is very vocal about it; she just wants him to leave. "Sniffing around to see if you might be able to come crawling back to me?" he wonders, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him. "Heard you're basically living in poverty now... working for some gossip site. Bet you're missing that Baratheon money."

(Not that she ever enjoyed any of it. When they got married, he informed her that being married would 'hurt his brand,' so she had never traveled with him, had never gone to fancy restaurants with him.)

(Why was she so stupid?) 

"I'm doing well for myself," Sansa counters, and she takes a step back. "Please, just leave me alone, Joffrey. I didn't intend for us to run into each other—"

"Oh, bullshit," he laughs, and he takes a lazy step forward. "You know, you don't actually look that bad," he says now, leering at her body. "Thought you'd get way more dumpy since the divorce, but you've been keeping things reasonably tight. Obviously, you're still a moron," he reasons, as though debating the merits of a new phone he might buy, "and there's just something pathetic about—"

"Please leave!" she says firmly. "This is the women's bathroom, and you have a restraining order. Just go away, _please_ —" 

She sounds so pleading, and she hates it, she wishes she were as physically powerful as a hockey player. The thought flits by in her mind; she recalls a clip of Jon Snow getting smashed into the sides of the stadium by a player on the opposing team. He had sprung forward, unbothered by the force, and had shoved the player away from him and continued on. With her thin arms, only vaguely muscled by the occasional barre class she splurges on, she cannot defend herself from Joffrey. 

"Uh huh, sure, now you're going to cry and play the victim again, like you always—"

Victim? Again? He tried to pull that bullshit during the legal proceedings, too. He is leisurely walking towards her, laughing at her, and he's talking but she can't hear it over the roar in her ears. Really? Is he seriously doing this? Is she seriously in this position, being harassed by this man that she literally crippled herself financially to get away from forever? Is he seriously ruining her life again—this time by trying to put her in an emotional state that will ruin her focus on what she's really here to do? 

She reaches down; Joffrey casts a shadow over her; she hears the bathroom door squeak as it opens; she flings her shoe. 

"Fuck!" 

It happens in a blur, like a buffering video that suddenly lurches forward: Joff ducks with a piggish squeal; she watches her Manolo whack Jon Snow in the face, the heel catching on his nose and tearing a gash, just as he's entering. The Manolo bounces away, clattering along the marble.

Okay, so she sort of missed. 

"What the fuck, Sansa?!" Joffrey yells, looking between her and Jon Snow. 

"I told you to get away from me!" she counters, horrified to realize that her eyes are starting to burn with tears. She always cries when she is angry, and it is humiliating and always has been. 

"You're such a psychotic bi—" 

Jon has recovered from the Manolo to the face and does not hesitate in lunging forward, grabbing Joffrey by his shirtfront, and slamming him against the wall, making the fern shake behind Sansa. "Get the fuck away from her," he growls. At the same time, the door swings open again, revealing Tormund, Loras, and Renly. 

"Oh god, he's triggered," Loras says at once, though in this moment, Sansa does not process it.

(Later, it will be the thing she cannot let go of, cannot fall asleep for, all night.)

"Let me go—" Joffrey whines, trying to weasel out of Jon's grasp, but Jon pins him in place with a disgusted grimace and little effort, his shoulders rising and falling.

"Oh my god, tell me you are not BRAWLING at my BIRTHDAY PARTY, that is _so_ tacky!" Renly yells, marching in and attempting to yank Jon away from Joffrey. "Are you literally bleeding, Snow—" he halts, looking down. "Wait, whose Manolo is this? Such a good color, are we calling this malachite?" 

Joffrey slumps against the wall, mouth quivering as he stares up at Jon; Jon reluctantly steps back, out of breath and flushed in the face. There is a gash on his nose where the heel of her shoe caught him, and he absently wipes at it, smearing the blood slightly, but he doesn't seem to care, his gaze set on Joffrey.

"Um, it was called jade on the box," Sansa blurts, because she doesn't know what else to say, fully realizing as she says this ridiculous line that her face is wet with tears; that Jon Snow, professional hockey player, is bleeding from her shoe to his face; and her horrible ex-husband is whimpering on the floor of this very fancy ladies' room. Her personal problems—which she has done yeoman's work to conceal from the world—are now fully on display.

"Huh, I'd go with malachite, honestly, it has such depth," Renly ponders, picking up the shoe and tossing it to her. She manages to catch it by clutching it clumsily to her chest. "So is anyone going to explain?"

"He attacked this woman, who apparently has a restraining order against him," Jon says disgustedly, glancing at Sansa. "He chased her into the bathroom and attacked—"

"—I didn't attack her! I didn't even touch her; the crazy bitch threw her shoe at me—" Joffrey yells, his voice bouncing off the walls.

"And why did I feel the need to do that, Joffrey?" Sansa points out, wishing her voice weren't so thick and shaky with tears, but at least she's speaking up as she never did in their marriage. Renly is staring at her, and then his blue eyes narrow. 

"Oh, shit, wait, are you the little ex-wife?" he realizes. "Ugh, I knew there was more to that stupid story than Cersei was letting on. Get out," he says to Joffrey. He looks at Jon, who waves him off, in an _I've got it,_ sort of way.

Joffrey looks at Sansa then, his face nearly puce, before getting up. 

The bathroom is silent but for the squeak of his fine shoes as he clumsily gets to his feet and brushes off his trendy jeans. They are all watching him. She cannot believe she was ever stupid enough to marry this fool. "Come on, out," Renly adds, grabbing Joffrey by the back of his shirt and shoving him, hard, out the door. 

"You alright?" Tormund asks Jon, who is touching his nose again, feeling the damage. 

"Yeah, yeah, fine," he mutters, glancing at his alternate. Tormund raises his brows, in a look that almost reads as exasperation, though Sansa can't understand it. 

"Uh, I'll get some ice," Loras offers, and Tormund follows, and then, suddenly, somehow, she and Jon are alone together. 

"I am so sorry about the shoe," Sansa begins in a low voice, but Jon just shakes his head. 

"It's fine, forget it," he says, looking down. 

"Here, let me—" she snatches at a pile of thick paper towels, folded and set in an elegant mother-of-pearl tray, and wets them. Her hands are shaking, and she sees Jon Snow's grey eyes take this in as she turns back to him. "I am so sorry," she blurts out again. "I cannot believe I—"

"—Seriously, stop, it's fine," Jon dismisses, and there's an awkward moment where she hovers before him with the fist full of sopping paper towels and he leans back, and then they're stepping closer and he is letting her dab at his face, her forearm brushing against the crisp fabric of his shirt. There's a long, deep gash along his nose, and the beginnings of a bruise along his orbital bone. She watches him blink quickly, averting his gaze as she steps closer, and she cannot help but notice how thick his lashes are, an unexpectedly sweet feature on such a difficult man. She hears him swallow as she wipes the paper towels along his cheek, and a few drops of water roll down his skin from the paper t owel. She moves to wipe them just as he does, and their hands collide, and they mutter their apologies. 

"I think it's going to be an ugly bruise," Sansa warns as she pulls back. Her voice is still thick, and there is that shuddery, post-cry feeling in her throat that draws her attention to how she must look. She always gets quite red when she cries, and she is afraid to see what her tears have done to her mascara and eyeliner. 

"Oh no, never had one of those before," he says, and it takes her a moment to realize he is joking. She smiles weakly, and he just looks away. 

"Are you—are you alright?" he forces out. He looks back at her, at last.

"Yes, actually, I think I am," she says. "Thanks for coming to check on me."

"Yeah, sure." He bites his lip. "You have, um," he pauses, reaching up, and then his thumb is smoothing along the top of her cheek as he bites his lip again, touching her with such care that she feels all the blood rush to her face. "Got it," he says under his breath, and he steps back quickly just as the door swings open again. 

"Are you alright, Sansa?" Loras asks, tossing a bag of ice to Jon that he catches absently, turning away from Sansa. "Joffrey is a jerk—Renly complains about him all the time. He didn't even want to invite him tonight." He keeps glancing warily at Jon, another clue that Sansa will ponder later. 

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you," Sansa says, clearing her throat. 

"Renly got rid of him, so you can come out of the bathroom," Loras promises, gallantly holding his arm out to her, and she cannot help but laugh as she takes it and allows him to escort her out of the ladies', with Jon behind them, holding the bag of ice to his face and saying nothing. 

"Oh my GOD are you, like, okay?" Margaery squeals as soon as they exit the hallway, lunging at Sansa and enveloping her in a hug. "I had no idea!" she stage-whispers as she pulls back from Sansa. "You totally don't seem like the type to marry Joff!"

"I'm not," Sansa says with a grimace. She looks around, but Jon Snow is already gone, disappeared into the crowd. The party is rowdier now, and Sansa feels a lurch of disappointment. She will probably not get another shot at him; yet another thing tilled over by Joffrey. She blinks back the urge to cry. "That was, um, nice of Jon," she remarks, just for something to say, since both Tyrell siblings are looking anxiously at her. 

"I told you, he's the absolute sweetest," Margaery sighs, just as Loras mutters something like, "chaos tour Jon."

"What was that?" she asks, and Loras avoids her eyes. 

"Nothing, sorry," he says evasively. "His temper, you know." He waves his hand, but she can tell he is lying. "Anyway," he continues hastily, and then slips away without saying anything else. 

"I think I'm going to head home," Sansa says to Margaery, who gives a sympathetic frown and a squeeze of her arm. 

"You need a shoulder to cry on, sweetie? Some midnight tacos?" 

"No," Sansa says, bristling, then she feels bad for it. Margaery is trying to be nice, but she hates the assumption that she is weak, or needy. And tacos are so messy anyway. She does not need any damn sympathy tacos. "Thanks," she adds to soften it. 

"What are you going to do about the story?" 

"I don't know," she admits. 

Sansa weaves through the party, waving at Tormund before slipping to the elevator. She is wobbly in her Manolos and she feels so deflated. And she is rudderless; she does not know what she will write about. Maybe she does need some sympathy tacos after all. ...Yet at the same time she is feeling that old tickling, tingling sense. She cannot explain it; she does not know what it means. She has the strange sense that she has left something important behind; she has the same strange feeling she had that day she spied the green heels in the window. A flashing, a flickering... What does it mean? She has the sense of walking along thick soil, sensing little green shoots beneath it. 

The doors part with a ping as she hits the ground floor, and Sansa steps out onto the sidewalk, pulling her mobile from her clutch to call an Uber, and that's when she sees him. 

Jon is leaning against the brick wall, a tailored coat draped over his arm, looking down at his own phone. Just as he looks up to see her, a sleek black SUV pulls up to the curb. She is guessing that's his ride for the night. 

"Hey," she calls, walking between him and the curb. "Thank you again." 

He waves wordlessly at her and pushes off from the wall, making to walk past her, in that focused way he always walks past the media, no eye contact or warmth. "Wait. Please." 

He turns to face her. 

"Yeah?"

"I was supposed to write about you tonight," she admits, raising her voice over the roar of another car going by on the road. "I don't know what to write." 

His brow quirks. 

"What about my toxic masculinity? Or my inherent sexism?" 

He sounds antagonistic, but he's facing her and he's not walking away. He is like February, a world so grey yet so tingling with hidden promise. 

"No," she says, "I don't think you are sexist, actually." 

"So what am I, then?" His voice is a blade. The light from Stag & Ivy paints his face in blues and reds, highlighting what she has done to his face, revealing the softness of his humanity.

"Fragments. I don't know how to fit them together."

He still isn't walking away, still is watching her, so she continues. "You're progressive, you're protective, you have a very bad temper, you're private. Yet the sports journalists say you're a 'sweetie pie' during practices, that you make a huge deal out of every rookie's first goal, and to talk to anyone who knows you at all, I can see you are utterly loved. But when I've watched clips of you during games, I sense—" 

"You sense?" he prompts, when she doesn't finish. 

"—A man who is in the middle of a shift," she says, realizing it is true as she says it. "Something is changing about you right now. I don't know how to put my finger on it. You're mid-transformation." 

"Write that, then," he dismisses with a shrug, and he turns from her. "Night," he says, but he glances back at her—so briefly—before getting into the car. 

* * *

_**Myranda [02:04am]** : SO? WHAT DOES HE SMELL LIKE _

_**Sansa [02:05am]:** like soap and starch. Go to bed, Myranda!_

_**Myranda [02:05am]:** I LITERALLY AM THERE ALREADY_

_**Sansa [02:06am]:** The article I am sending you isn't about Jon Snow, but I've got something else that's good I think? At least for now? It's juicy and no one else knows._

_**Sansa [02:07am]:** I need more time on Jon Snow. _

_**Myranda [02:08am]:** ugh don't we all! i want to be on him foreverrrrrr_

_**Myranda [02:08am]:** go for it, girl. fingers crossed it keeps us afloat xoxo_

Sansa sets her phone aside, then looks back at her laptop screen, at the Word document filled with words that seemed to come from her soul. 

Jon Snow, she thinks, is not the only person who is mid-transformation. She looks down, then, at the cast-off Manolos laying akimbo beside her couch, glinting bright even in the low light. Malachite—Renly was right. They have such depth, and she has waited to wear them for so long. 

She saves the Word document one last time, then creates an email and adds it as an attachment. She only hesitates for a moment before she hits 'send' to Myranda. 

You have to cut off the dead bits so better things can grow—she knows this. 

She closes her email and goes to Twitter. She has been scrolling through Renly's Twitter account, has created a Twitter account of her own. Now she can focus on the real story. She opens a DM to Renly. 

**SansaSnark87:** Hi, Renly. This is Sansa Stark. You met me tonight at your birthday party. 

She lingers, she hesitates, then she goes for it. 

**SansaSnark87** : I'm the ex-wife. 

**SansaSnark87:** I was wondering if you would be able to help me with something. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this could have been a lot worse tbh; i cut out like 1000 words of just me thirsting

" _Girl_. Are you, like, sure about this?"

Myranda is uncharacteristically serious, her voice still raw from her cold. "You don't have to set your life on fire for the Vale, Sansa. This is kind of big."

"I'm not," Sansa promises. Tightening the belt of her soft pink robe, she lingers in front of her laptop and studies the unplayed video on the screen. She has been watching post-game interviews and media circuits all morning, developing a timeline. Her kitchen table is covered with notes, and though she is not one of those thousand-tab types of people, she has fifty tabs open at the moment, all related to Jon Snow. "I'm not sure anyone will really care, to be honest."

"Is it true?"

There's no judgment or suspicion in Myranda's voice, reminding Sansa that Myranda is comfortable with half-truths—that she is not an idealist in the same way that Sansa is. She's asking out of curiosity, not integrity. And it's a stray thought and it's one she has had multiple times while working for the Vale, but it's a thought nonetheless, one that dims the shine of the job for her: She is not pursuing journalistic truth in this job.

(She thinks, absently, of Jon Snow; she thinks of his media hatred.)

(Can she really blame him for it?)

"All of it. It's all true."

She hears Myranda let out a sigh that crackles over the phone.

"I think we should publish it as a blind item, to be honest. It's pretty incendiary." She pauses. "And I'm sorry you went through all that. I'm not invalidating it, at all. It's just that—"

"—We can't afford to take on the Baratheon-Lannister empire," Sansa guesses. "I understand, believe me. I couldn't either."

"It just feels like a bigger story than our site," Myranda hedges. "It feels like an expose, one you'd find on the Times' site. It's not really Vale material, you know? We write about whether hot hockey players have girlfriends, and what weird fashion choices Marillion has made lately. And we drop some social-justice buzzwords, but we don't actually usually say anything that really _means_ anything. But maybe that's what we need? I don't know, let me think on this. Once we do this, we can't take it back. Petyr definitely needs to review it—I'll bounce it over to him and see what he thinks."

"Of course." Sansa has rarely interacted with Petyr Baelish, who works as the liaison between the Vale and the corporation that owns them as well as a number of other media outlets. He doesn't typically review articles unless there is a potential for legal difficulties—and there certainly is a potential here. The only thing protecting them is that Vale's readership is so small and that it could easily fly under Cersei's radar.

"Anyway—get to the good stuff. I cannot believe you hung out with Loras Tyrell—what a _gender!_ Those curls! Those eyes! But tell me about Jon Snow," Myranda gushes. "Did we get a sense of boxers or briefs? I've been wondering, and researching, and I still haven't really been able to—"

"—Myranda, I should tell you, I hit him with my shoe."

Silence.

"You WHAT."

* * *

_Direwolves Whatsapp Group Chat, Sunday Morning_

_~Loras Tyrell 11:10am:_ so are we going to address the fact that snow was nailed by a redhead last night or...?

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:11am:_ congrats guys!!

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:11am:_ wait what 

_~Pypar Mummer 11:12am:_ grenn this stock response does not make sense 

_~Pypar Mummer 11:12am_ : do we need to press a different button on you or

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:12am_ : yes it does he and giantsbane finnally got 2gether!

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:13am_ : omg

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:13am:_ i love you grenn

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:14am:_ u are gr8 loras but i dont like guys

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:14am:_ do you SERIOUSLY think if tyrell left renly hed go for you?

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:15am_ : i am very handsom

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:16am_ : you are def handsome grenn but if i dumped renly id prob go for pyp 

_~Pypar Mummer 11:16am_ : WHAT i am really uncomfortable now 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:17am_ : jk rather die, you all look like *such* shit 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:17am_ : buy some eye cream and get a real haircut that doesnt look like your mom gave it to you at the kitchen table ffs

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:18am_ : wat does eyecream do?? i need glasses

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:19am_ : nothing according to my gf, just asked, she was rly pissy about it too

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:20am_ : and based on how you goaltended the other day, grenn, you totally need glasses 

_~Pypar Mummer 11:20am_ : the puck is the little black round thing that goes back and forth, youre trying to keep it from getting in our net, idk if we told you

 _~Grenn Aurochs 11:21am_ : fuk u 

_~Pypar Mummer 11:23am_ : i guess well never know what redhead nailed snow bc i think giantsbane and snow both muted this thread 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:24am_ : she was really pretty! and friends w my sis 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:25am_ : not great aim tho i gotta say 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:25am_ : ren is obsessed w her 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:26am_ : keeps calling her iconic and saying he loved her shoes 

_~Loras Tyrell 11:26am_ : that was how she nailed him btw

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:26am_ : in the face, threw her shoe at him, was aiming for her ex hub, so he beat him up

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:27am_ : um

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:27am_ : sorry, what

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:27am_ : CHAOS TOUR CONTINUES

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:28am_ : HE CANT BE STOPPED

 _~Loras Tyrell 11:28am_ : [flaming_elmo.gif]

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:30am_ : o fuck

 _~Pypar Mummer 11:31am_ : has anyone told tarly

* * *

Sansa has literally no idea how to dress for coffee with Renly Baratheon on a Sunday afternoon.

She stands in front of her closet, deploring the lack of options. Nothing quite lives up to the malachite Manolos—everything feels either too dowdy or too worn, too basic or too safe. Renly Baratheon is known for his impeccable style, for his eye for color and for his inherent elegance, and in the last few years, even bargain-bin-diving at J.Crew has been a splurge for Sansa, Manolos notwithstanding. She doesn't exactly have a treasure trove of elegant pieces waiting for her.

Everything in her closet feels like a nod to her university self, like a time capsule of her pre-Joffrey self—one still supported by her parents, her taste defined by preppy tradition and a girlish appreciation for sparkle, not to mention an inclination to fit in with everyone else. There is very little in her wardrobe that says 'competent and stylish professional woman' and it all, at the moment, feels very trite and basic.

...And perhaps, in some way, emblematic of something.

(She doesn't want to think about it.)

Two hours later she walks to the Kraken Coffee in a plain outfit, hoping that a bold lip and sunglasses will be enough to impress Renly, and mentally noting that she needs to stop filling her closet with impulse purchases bought on sale. The morning hangover rush has emptied, lunch is over, and at the moment Kraken's isn't too busy, so Sansa gets a latte and sits by the large window. The sun comes in around the sea-creature logo on the window, brightening the space, and she's just admiring the light when Renly saunters in, looking effortlessly cool in Dries Van Noten, his black hair artfully rumpled. 

"I did, like, five sheet masks just to look human again," he informs her, after he sits down across from her with a tiny espresso, still wearing his sunglasses. "What a night, oh my god. You should have stayed!" 

"I'm not really built for that kind of partying," Sansa admits (she has accepted that she will never be the life of the party like Robb or the wild child like Arya; she likes going home early and not waking up hungover) as Renly downs his espresso, then shudders. 

"Fuck. So bitter," he mutters. "I've had like five of these too today, so if I seem a little hyper, that's why." 

"How is Loras faring?" 

"Oh, he's so young, he doesn't get hangovers... yet." Renly grins, wiggling his eyebrows over the tops of his shades. "So what can I do for you, my queen? Also, I want the full story on you and Joff, though if you don't want to tell it in a Kraken's on a Sunday, I get it." He sits back, looking comfortable, and Sansa feels a rush of gratitude for him. 

"I want to understand Jon Snow." 

Renly throws back his head and roars with laughter. 

"Oh my god, get in line and be ready to wait," he snorts. "Hope you don't have to pee."

"He's a mystery?" Sansa opens her notebook, and Renly shifts, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. He is wearing several rings that only seem to enhance the masculinity of his hands. 

"Oh, he could play, like, a really un-charismatic James Bond. What's your motivation here, anyway?" he wants to know, lowering his voice. "I mean, don't get me wrong—I _love_ the Vale. I read it any time I'm procrastinating, and it's great. But it's not exactly an in-depth kind of site." 

"Maybe that should change," Sansa suggests lightly. "I have no interest in hockey—"

"—Hard same—"

"—so I wasn't interested in covering him until I met him." 

They regard each other, Renly's manicured brows arched over the top of his sunglasses as he studies her. A number of very fit moms in yoga pants with enormous strollers come in and take the table beside them, and Renly casts a disparaging look at them and their loud children before turning his attention back to her.

"Look, I don't know him. I mean, I love him for what he's done for Loras, and this is the happiest I've ever seen Loras," Renly says pragmatically, "and yes, he's gorgeous. I could look at him all day. He's only gotten hotter with age, too—really growing into those features. But we have basically nothing in common, and any time we're stuck chatting, it's just super awkward. I'm just not the best person to give you a perspective on him. Like, I am pro-Snow, to the end, and apparently he's super great at hockey, and every sports person I know has a major hard-on for him. Beyond that? I've got nothing." 

"Age seems to be a big topic regarding Jon Snow," Sansa probes, because she refuses to hit a dead end, and Renly cocks his head to the side, grinning. 

"You are determined, aren't you?" he marvels appreciatively. "What's your fascination with him? Besides the hotness."

"He's not my type," Sansa promises him. "Like I said, I had no interest in covering him until last night, and then I saw a glimmer of something. He seems like a mystery to me."

"But then you ran into my gross neph, and it ruined the night," Renly summarizes, toying with his empty espresso cup. "So how fucked are you from the divorce? I know Cersei; no one messes with her precious baby. I'm sure she hired the _best of the best_ divorce lawyer." 

Sansa tries not to cringe. 

"Pretty screwed," she admits. She avoids using foul language in conversation, but 'fucked' is a great way to put her financial situation for the last few years. It's gotten better but the climb has been slow and agonizing, and she cannot bring herself to ask her family for a loan out of the shame of it. She knows that both Ned and Catelyn would jump at the chance to help her, and perhaps if she were younger, she would take the chance. It would be such a relief—yet at what cost? 

(She is rebuilding on her own terms; she is proving to herself that she can do this.)

"And you're writing listicles about the top ten fedoras Marillion has owned, and think pieces on cranky hockey players?" Renly whistles. "That is bleak as fuck. You need a new direction, Sansa. Nothing wrong with being a gossip columnist but you're never digging yourself out of a Lannister-sized hole that way."

"Thank you for the advice, but—" she bristles.

"—I'm just saying!" Renly holds up his hands. "Okay, look, I like you and I think you have fantastic shoes, and I love that you threw a Manolo at Joff's head, though _my god_ he doesn't even _deserve_ a Manolo—much better to throw a Louboutin at his bougie head," he confides.

Sansa cannot help but laugh at his disdain, and Renly continuous, buoyed by her amusement. "I have season tickets for the Direwolves games—I have my own box—and they have a home game this Thursday. Why don't you come? I might even be able to get you into the locker room afterwards and we can spring you on Snow, see what he makes of you. Maybe you can scare some real answers out of him. I don't know shit about hockey but my PA Brienne does, and she can probably give you her perspective. I'm sure she has thoughts. Plus, it's a good time. We drink beer and basically ignore the game, and Brienne explains what happened afterward so I can more accurately massage Loras' ego." 

"That—that would be amazing," Sansa breathes. She has spent enough of her morning watching the post-game interviews to know that by the time the sports journalists get to him, Jon Snow already has his media mask on. But immediately post-game, in the locker room? He might not be ready yet. She might actually learn something; she might get to see how his teammates interact with him when there are no cameras. "Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You don't know how much your help means to me." 

Renly studies her.

"Margaery's right—you are adorable. There's something so hopeful and tragic about you," he muses. "You're like an abused golden retriever that just got its first bath from a nice person."

Sansa stares at him.

"Um. Thank you?" 

"You're welcome, I love goldens." Renly pulls his phone out. "What's your number? I'll text you the details." 

They trade numbers, and Renly insists that they leave before the babies' crying makes his head 'literally and actually split open.' On the sidewalk, Renly kisses her on the nose. "I'll be in touch."

Sansa watches him go, and stands on the sidewalk in front of the Kraken's. She glances back at her reflection in the window, reflexively checking to see how she looks. With her notebook and her hair pulled back, she looks like a journalist; she looks like a woman with a direction. 

(This _is_ technically a direction, right?) 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is written according to my highly specific, very niche interests, and is wildly deviating from the word-count-based outline i set for myself! I HOPE YOU LIKE HOCKEY because you are about to get a FIREHOSE IN THE FACE!!!

Four days later, Sansa is waiting outside of the sprawling stadium for Renly and his friends to arrive. Spectators stream into the stadium in a steady flow, garbed in either the black, grey, and white of the Direwolves, or the harsh blue and white of the Cranes. Many jerseys bear the name SNOW across the shoulders, making her belly do a funny jump every time she sees the name. TYRELL is another popular jersey, as is GIANTSBANE—primarily among women who are wearing the jersey as part of a 'look' with high heels or shearling boots and heavy bronzer.

("Look, I'd hit it," Myranda had mentioned the other day, pulling up a picture of Tormund. "He could toss me around like a Viking. It would be, like, a religious experience. We'd do it on furs and I'd probably break a limb.")

And then a glossy limo rolls up, pulsing with heavy bass, and the window rolls down. Renly pokes his head out, lowering his sunglasses. 

"Puppy!" he greets, neon and chaos behind him as he climbs out of the limo. "Are you ready? Oh my god, look at you, you look like a baby journalist—so cute!" 

Renly is wearing a Tyrell jersey French-tucked into leather pants, and somehow doesn't look ridiculous. His friends pour out of the limo after him, looking like they are all headed to wildly different events. There are scuffed sneakers and Louboutins, slinky slip dresses and Gucci hoodies. "Come on, Brienne's already in the box, because she's a nerd like you. I do not understand how anyone manages to be on time for anything. Like, it must be some superpower that the good fairies did not bless me with," he rambles, absently petting Sansa's head and making her slightly uncomfortable. "Ugh, this _ponytail_! It's so soft. I want one," he coos, brushing the end of her ponytail against his cheek. 

(He seems heavily inebriated at the moment, and very different from the focused yet friendly man she got coffee with. She sort of prefers that Renly.)

"Oh my god, are you the little journalist?" squeals a woman, flinging her arms around Sansa and nearly braining her with her Celine bag. 

"She is, isn't she the cutest!" Margaery shrieks from behind the woman. She also sounds like she has perhaps had a flute of champagne or six. Sansa gets a mouthful of her curls as Margaery stumbles into her and sways with her. "So cute, just the cutest." 

(Sansa tries not to feel annoyed. She is not cute, dammit; she is a serious journalist!)

Margaery and her friend link arms with Sansa and lead her inside, through the metal detectors. Renly waves to the ticket-scanner that she's with him, and then Sansa is urged onward, into the stadium.

Hard rock, from about ten to fifteen years ago, is blaring, and the walls are lined with enormous screens playing other games that must be happening today. There are multiple bars throughout, each of them choked with people—bloated, balding men in retro Direwolves jerseys; Bright Young Things just off of work, looking clean-cut in peacoats and trendy jeans, sipping craft beer; well-meaning wives wearing Direwolves ski hats and carrying sensible cross-body purses; sour-faced teenaged girls in leggings and Direwolves jerseys with long, lank hair, looking at their phones; scruffy teenaged boys in band tees and baggy jeans.

Sansa is dragged past all of it—the fast-food stations with long, snaking lines; the scantily-clad girls advertising something (she doesn't catch what, specifically, they're advertising)—to a set of escalators that Renly and his friends messily crowd onto, ratcheting up Sansa's anxiety. 

As they ascend, even bigger flatscreens flash with Direwolves and Cranes marketing: action shots of the most popular players, in high-contrast, with the logos of their various sponsorships. A ten-foot poster of Jon Snow hangs along one wall with the Nike motto; it catches and reflects the light of the screens. One of the girls shrieks at Renly when Loras pops up on the screen and he waves his hand. 

"Yeah, yeah, he's beautiful, what do you want from me?" he says, but his blue eyes are flickering with pride. 

(Jon Snow pops up, of course, and Sansa feels that little clench in the pit of her belly again. Rendered in black-and-white, his grey eyes are something else, and the hairs all along her skin prickle. She has to look away. The enormity of the professional hockey machine is just suddenly hitting her.)

(There are many thousands of people here, and they all know Jon Snow's name.) 

"Wait. Waymar Royce plays for the Cranes? Wasn't he on the Direwolves?" she asks Margaery, as some of the Cranes players flash by on the screens. Royce is dark-haired and slender; he is of a type with Snow, absolutely not her type personally. They get off the escalator to the next level, which has an arcade and more bars and fast-food stations. 

"Oh, yeah girl, he was traded when Loras was!" Margaery swats her arm playfully, as though Sansa should know this. "Honestly, he could rail me too. They all could, except Hagsmire, because, ew."

At last they reach Renly's box, and the volume and disorder and _muchness_ of the stadium is finally shut out. 

It's a large room, and it's swanky, with plush carpet and warm, low light. A hardwood bar curves along one wall with a man in a vest polishing glasses; rows of squashy leather seating face the ice. A very tall, broad, angular woman in an ill-fitting navy suit and windbreaker, with brutally short blonde hair, is arranging dishes of candies along the arm rests. She doesn't look up when the group tromps in, but there is a stiffness, a self-consciousness, to her posture that tells Sansa she is shy. Sansa immediately likes her.

"Brienne! Look at my new puppy!" Renly calls, and he pulls Sansa to him. Brienne's gaze flicks up, just long enough for Sansa to be struck by her blue eyes, and then she looks down again. "Brienne is literally the only person in this room who knows shit about hockey, Sansa. Brienne," he complains suddenly, "why are you still wearing those boots? I will literally buy you new ones, I've told you that." 

He laughs, and his tone is not necessarily unkind, but Sansa feels a stab of protectiveness, and she turns to Brienne. 

"Alright, since you're the expert here—what is the most appropriate drink for a hockey game?" she asks, and Renly turns his attention elsewhere, bored by the conversation. 

Brienne looks embarrassed. 

"Um, I always get the same plain old lager," she mutters, stuffing her hands in her pockets and shrugging. 

"I'll get two of those, then," she says, and lines up among Renly's friends at the little bar. None of them have the slightest interest in Brienne, and their interest in Sansa seems to have waned—she cannot help but be relieved. 

When she returns and hands a beer to Brienne, the woman has a quiet glow. "I hope you don't mind, but I'll probably be bothering you throughout the game with questions," Sansa tells her as they walk to the front of the room and stand before the glass, looking down at the rink. "I'm really new to hockey." 

"Oh, it's not hard to understand, don't worry," Brienne says eagerly, warmed by Sansa's deference, and Sansa finds herself charmed. Men speed and swoop around the rink in buzzing circles, the Direwolves on one end and the Cranes on the other. "You're researching Jon Snow, right? There he is, he always does his warmups the same way," Brienne says, pointing out Jon Snow. 

And there he is. Jon Snow cuts along the ice like a blade. There's just something different about him; even her inexpert eyes can detect it. "Royce used to be in that line with Snow and Giantsbane. It was a good line," Brienne explains, as they watch Jon come to a stop to talk to a Cranes player—that's Waymar Royce, she realizes. The chat looks friendly, and Snow turns away, grinning.

"How do you think the game will go?" She watches Brienne grimace, though her eyes never leave the ice. 

"We'll see. Chett Hagsmire is playing tonight, and years ago he gave Snow a bad concussion." 

Brienne points to a broad, plodding Cranes player who is stretching on the ice, his gaze fixed, ominously, in Jon's direction. "It was disgusting. He had been slashing and tripping Snow all game, spent almost the whole time in the penalty box, and then at the end of the game he tripped Snow and speared him. Knocked him out; there was blood everywhere on the ice. Snow didn't get up for a whole minute, which is a long time in this case." Brienne sips her beer. "Put him out for two seasons; we all thought his career was done." 

"How is that even—how is that allowed?" she stammers. "How is Chett still allowed to play?"

Brienne shrugs. 

"Chett is a thug," she says. "Snow has played a very clean game for years now, but..." 

"...But?" Sansa probes. Brienne looks uncomfortable. 

"Lately he just... well, he's spending a little more time in the penalty box than usual. He's a little more unpredictable on the ice, a little more reactive. In the years since that game, Hagsmire hasn't gotten anywhere near him, because good luck getting through Giantsbane, but..." 

This is what Sansa is after. Her heart pounding, she watches the players disappear from the ice as the lights go down. There's a little scene with the Direwolves' mascot and some advertising, and the players' faces are flashed on the large screens that hang over the ice, and again she is faced with Jon Snow and some of his career stats. 

And then the players are coming back onto the ice, and Sansa listens to this stadium full of people shrieking for _Jon Snow_ as she watches him skate back onto the ice. 

What must that feel like—to have thousands of people screaming your name? What must it feel like to have thousands of people wearing a jersey with your name on it? And he's been doing this for so long, been a star for so long—what must that do to a person's self-concept? 

Sansa is struck by how much of her life is lived in private; there is no one to witness her triumphs or her failures. No one knows anything about her life, and she cannot imagine what it might feel like to have any of it on display. Even though she has sent Myranda her article about Joffrey Baratheon, she will remain unnamed in the article. If it ever gets published, most of the world will not be able to puzzle out her identity; her most public action will remain private. 

But Jon Snow is always on display. Everything about him is public. The internet can find out if and where he voted; they can root through his garbage and find his bank statements; there are whole Reddit threads dedicated to snaps of him 'in the wild' as he loads his car with groceries or buys coffee or gets gas. 

And in just a few hours she is going to be cornering this man, demanding that he offer yet more of himself.

Before she knows it, the game has begun. Renly and his friends are playing some game—it might be Cards Against Humanity—but Brienne is all focus, watching the game and gripping her beer. 

"Ugh, that was offsides," she mutters, multiple times, shaking her head. Sansa has learned from Robb and Arya that when people say this, they don't necessarily require a response or agreement, so she just watches Jon Snow weave along the ice, but he's fast, darting between players and always, somehow, ending up just where he seems to need to be, as though he can predict the future. "Watch where Snow is looking, that's where the puck is," Brienne coaches her. "Eyes of a hawk—oh, no."

The game pauses, a ref talking to Jon.

"What happened?"

"Hooking. But I guess they're not calling it, even though we all know he's been doing that more lately, but then, it's Hagsmire, so..." 

The game moves at a steady pace through the first period and the second—a goal scored by Jon and assists from him on two goals, according to Brienne—until at one point, Snow collides with Hagsmire and smacks him into the boards behind the net. 

The Cranes fans explode with rage. Chett Hagsmire is flattened against the boards by Jon, making the plexiglass tremble and flash in the bright lights, and in the recoiling force, he throws Jon back. The game stops and the refs swoop in; Brienne squeezes her plastic cup so hard that beer sloshes onto her leg but she doesn't seem to notice. 

"That seemed...bad?" Sansa says, watching Chett struggle to his feet and rip off his helmet, making a dive for Snow and screaming obscenities as Jon rips off his own helmet and begins to lunge, but he's blocked by the ref as Jon is yanked back by Tormund. Sansa watches Waymar Royce skate over to Jon and make a 'what the fuck' sort of gesture that Jon ignores, skating past him to the penalty box. 

"Boarding," Brienne says, still squinting at the rink. "Could have been an accident, Hagsmire makes sharp turns so Snow might've assumed he was turning, but... that was ugly if it was intentional. He might be out for the rest of the game for that." 

Sansa stares at Jon as he sits in the penalty box, staring straight ahead. Maybe she doesn't know much about hockey, but that looked to her like revenge. "Oh, so since it's unclear, it's not going to be a major penalty," Brienne summarizes. She shakes her head. "Something is off about him this season. He had better watch it, he's the captain, he's supposed to set the example for the rest of the team. He can't be behaving like that." 

"What do you think it is?" 

"Honestly, I don't know. It's really unlikely that they're going to win another Cup during his career—the team's just not up to it, beyond him and Giantsbane—so maybe he's mad that his place in history is stationary now," Brienne guesses with a shrug. 

"Do you think he cares about that?" 

They watch Jon come back onto the ice, not remotely subdued or remorseful, and within a moment he scores another goal, skating dangerously past Chett. 

"Well, maybe not. I don't really know," Brienne admits. "When Mormont was the general manager, Snow toed the line much more. Now that it's Thorne..." 

Brienne seems to remember she is talking to someone who is a reporter, because she looks at Sansa. "I really don't know," she says hastily. "Snow is a fine player, he's one of the greats in history, but I didn't start paying attention to the team until Renly started dating Loras, so I really don't know." 

"That's fine, it's just a perspective," Sansa reassures her, and Brienne relaxes. 

"You ready to go meet some hot hockey boys after the game?" Renly asks, standing behind Brienne and Sansa and setting his hand on each woman's shoulder. 

"Oh my god, she's going to be surrounded by sweaty, half-naked hotties," Margaery teases, coming over to slump on Sansa's lap. "Take secret pictures. Report back. It's for science!"

"Don't do that, puppy, it's probably illegal," Renly warns, "but also, maybe do it. I don't know your life!"

("Please don't do it, for my sake," Brienne mutters, and Sansa reassures her she will not be taking secret locker room photos, and the woman visibly unclenches her jaw.)

The rest of the game flies by; Margaery eventually gets off Sansa's lap, and the room becomes louder and more chaotic. Every time the Direwolves score, one of the girls takes off another item of clothing, and Renly pours everyone shots, and Brienne looks increasingly anxious. 

"At least he's wearing the leather, he always has a hard time getting those off after this many shots of Patron," Brienne mutters in exasperation, glancing back at Renly as, laughing and flushed-face, he struggles out of his Tyrell jersey. 

But Sansa can't bring herself to care, because she is beginning to get nervous—more than nervous, actually. She may be in the beginning stages of panic. Her palms are clammy and she has the urge to pee, even though she knows she doesn't actually have to. Her mouth feels dry and the questions she has written down, in her girlish, bubbly handwriting, seem ridiculous and pat and shallow. 

Renly is right; she needs a new direction. Definitely a direction not leading her directly into a locker room of professional athletes who certainly do not want her to be—

The third period ends. The Direwolves have won, five to four.

"Okay, it's go time," Renly says, sounding less drunk than he has been acting; he is clothed again, and he and Brienne are leading her out of the box, and her sweaty palms smear the ink on her list of questions for Jon Snow. 

They go against the stream of fans leaving their seats; they go down, down, down narrow stairs and then through a heavy door, and they're in a windowless hall, the walls echoing with tens of thousands of footfalls and shouts above, and they're approaching the clamorous sounds of men yelling—oh, god, why did she have that beer? If anything, she ought to have had an espresso—

"Hey boys!" Renly calls as they round a corner, and then, suddenly, they are in the Direwolves' locker room.

The air reeks of body odor, body spray, plastic, and powder, and twenty very sweaty, half-naked men are staring at her, in various stages of undress, the floor littered with jerseys and hockey pads and helmets. 

"Ah, the boyfriend," Tormund greets pleasantly. He is nearest to them, undoing the padding at his shoulders. His wild red mane is matted down with sweat.

"Looking _good_ , Tormund," Renly flirts, nodding at Tormund's under-armor; to his credit, Tormund just laughs and shakes his head.

"There's _girls_ in here," a thick-necked man blurts out—he's the goalie; he is wearing the most padding—and a slimmer man with large ears next to him laughs, and then everyone's laughing. A dour-faced man with long hair is rolling his eyes, drawling something insulting, but Sansa cannot process it, because she is staring at Jon Snow, and Jon Snow is staring back at her.

They are the only two people who are not laughing.

He's on the other end of the locker room, in the middle of taking off his own pads, sitting on the bench. His hair is sweaty and wild, and he's taken off the bandage where her Manolo struck him, revealing a purpled bruise that, somehow, does not detract from his features. He is all in black, and it is skin-tight, outlining every line of sinew, and he is frozen in stripping the padding from his waist; pads still sit on his shoulders, and his jersey and helmet and skates are scattered around him. There is something highly salient and real about him, moreso than when she met him at Renly's party. She is more aware of his elegant physicality, of the way his throat moves as he swallows, of the sheen of sweat on his neck, of the way his lashes stick together, of the way his under-armor stretches with every breath he draws in, of the lines in his hands as he holds the padding at his waist.

"Hey Snow! Remember this queen? She's the one who—"

"—I remember," Jon interrupts acidly, his gaze still fixed on Sansa. "What are you doing here? Media is expressly prohibited from this space." 

"'Expressly prohibited,'" Renly mimics, rolling his eyes. Loras is sitting beside Jon, carelessly beautiful, and he elbows Jon.

"She's not media, she's a friend," he points out.

"Yeah, we like, got coffee last weekend, and she spent all game listening to Brienne yammer on and on about hockey, so she's officially a friend now," Renly adds, slinging an arm around Brienne's shoulders as Brienne flushes unattractively. Jon's grey eyes flick disdainfully to Renly, then back to Sansa. 

"Right. You, like, don't know anything about the game and it's so embarrassing," Jon recalls flatly, mimicking the first thing she said to him. She supposes he must find himself amusing, and she feels her own face growing hot. This asshole—she is clearly anxious, clearly uncomfortable, and rather than just be kind and give her a soundbite, he's seriously going to humiliate her? Even after the conversation they had on the street?

(That moment had seemed so... so... _intimate_. She hadn't even told Myranda about it; she hadn't told anyone about it. She had not told anyone how he made her think of winter just before spring; she had not told anyone how he had gently, carefully, sweetly wiped running mascara from beneath her eye.)

And now he's acting like she's just another aggressive reporter?

Fuck. That. 

"Right, and fighting is now banned. It never happens," she fires back, quoting him back to himself, and Jon straightens slightly, as though surprised. "Except you almost got—to quote Brienne, who is amazing—a very ugly penalty tonight, so I suppose you don't know much about hockey either." 

"It was an accident—" he begins, but Loras scoffs into his jersey, and pretends to be busy with one of his pads when Jon shoots a scowl at him. 

"That was no accident—nor were any of your hooking penalties tonight," she says, hoping to Loras' hair that she is using that term correctly, and Loras and another player let out low whistles. 

"She's playing hardball, Snow!" teases the one with the big ears. 

"This is roasting?" she hears Tormund ask someone else. "She is good at it." 

Jon abruptly gets to his feet and grabs her arm, pulling her through the nearest door; the last thing she hears is someone yelling 'wear protection!' before the door closes and she is alone with Jon Snow.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i never post in the evenings but I COULDN'T HELP MYSELF so here we are!! In honor of the EPIC FAILURE that Tahoe has been today... here's more people NOT playing hockey!!!!

They are in a glorified broom closet that is packed to the gills with all sorts of things: hockey sticks and spare pads, helmets and cardboard boxes full of random Direwolves paraphernalia, and many, many boxes of tape. Sansa's back hits the stack of cardboard boxes, and they wobble behind her dangerously, as Jon Snow fumbles for the long, grotty string to turn on the light.

The naked bulb flickers and turns on as they regard each other.

"What," Jon Snow begins softly, "the _fuck_ is your problem?"

Her face is still hot to the touch and her blood is pounding in her ears. This close, she can more clearly see the way his hair clings to his neck with sweat, can perceive how hard his chest and shoulders look (and how fleshy she feels in comparison), how surprisingly broad he is compared to her. He's a slender man compared to the other players, but this close to her he seems powerful. Despite her dieting, she always seems to have a bit of fleshiness where her jeans cut into her stomach—Jon Snow has none of that, and the under-armor clinging to his abdomen clearly displays that fact.

("He can do _damage_ ," she recalls Myranda purring. She tries not to visibly swallow—he certainly looks like he could do some damage, especially after she watched him flatten Chett Hagsmire against the boards.)

"I'm a journalist, I told you, and you're a story," she begins the spiel she prepared. Now the idea of referencing her list of questions feels foolish, disorganized, and clumsy; she tries to recall from memory how she wanted this interview to go. But his anger, laser-focused on her, feels very real, and it is distracting her from what she prepared for. "I told you on the street—"

"—You are violating my privacy," he blurts out furiously, breathlessly, a high flush forming along his cheeks, and her stomach drops. "You are violating my team, too. Media is not allowed in the locker rooms; it is an agreement that I had to work very hard on."

They stare at each other. Her natural empathy and desire to be good and kind are at war with the fact that her life is careening out of control; that her bank balance does not reflect the woman she would like to be; that every time the world goes quiet, she hears Renly saying, _you need a new direction, Sansa_.

She knows—she feels it—that Jon Snow is a story, a puzzle, a mystery. She is also feeling a little bit like an asshole, but she can't give this up just yet. 

(For all of her reticence, her passivity, Sansa is at heart a fighter; she has, as Arya puts it, the wolf-blood; she has iron underneath her softness.) 

(She is not giving up.)

(Not yet.)

"I didn't know. No one said—" she begins, but falters when he rolls his eyes.

"—Because you're not a sports journalist, so you know nothing," he says scathingly, shaking his head. "You shouldn't be here. And the other guys might act fine with it, but that's only because our contracts are so delicate. Do you have any idea of the kinds of sacrifices you have to make to get to this level?" he continues furiously. 

He steps forward and she backs up, reflexively. A box topples over but neither acknowledges it. The bulb flickers. "No one is going to risk their contracts on something like this, that no one else will have any sympathy for. No one ever has sympathy when an athlete wants privacy, they say we were 'asking for it' by choosing to become pro athletes, so I do my best to protect my team and make sure they're not bombarded by asshole journalists trying to corner them into saying something stupid, or personal—"

"—I don't want to do that," Sansa interrupts. She is trying not to cry; she can feel her eyes are getting wet with that old urge to cry when she's furious, and the last rational piece of her knows that _she_ is the one in the wrong here, that she has no right to be furious, and that makes it all the more painful. "I swear it, okay? I'm not trying to trick you." 

"You were sent to Renly's party to trick me into telling you who I'm dating," Jon fires back, with a scoff. "You pretended—badly, by the way—to be a friend of Margaery's so you could talk to me." 

"Badly? Excuse me? I _am_ a friend of—"

"—I can tell you're not actually friends with her just by looking at you," Jon snarks, and she wonders if he is insulting her appearance. Her pride stings. 

"Yes, fine—it's true that I was sent to Renly's party to find out if you had a girlfriend, and I resented the assignment, because I found you boring and violent and, honestly, you come across like a brick in your interviews," she admits as Jon's face twists in disgust, "but after you helped me—with Joff—I realized there was more to you. I didn't write about the party—"

"—I know," Jon says, and Sansa stares.

"What do you mean you know? How?" 

"I looked you up," he admits, avoiding her eyes, "to see what bullshit you were going to write about me."

(She tries not to picture him at home, alone, on his laptop, typing in her name into Google. For some reason she pictures him on a bed, with a black laptop; _why_ is she wondering what kind of laptop he has, what kind of bed he has?)

"I don't want to—I don't want to write bullshit," she stumbles over the foul language, "about you. I was going to, but I realized you're more than that. You are one of the most well-recognized athletes in the world right now. Even I knew who you were, and I—"

"—Don't know shit about hockey, yeah," Jon finishes for her dryly. She decides to ignore him, and feels very mature about it, thanks much.

"You have depth," she tries again, "and I want to understand it. I want to understand you... as you would like to be understood. That is the purpose of a profile—that we build something together and I show it to the world. It's a little of my perspective, a little of yours, and the reader brings their own context, and it becomes a story. I'm not here to hoodwink you, I'm here to understand you."

She lets the words settle—she has always been met with success when she shows vulnerability—but Jon Snow remains unmoved.

(No, no, she is not giving up, because what else is there? Nothing has set her journalist's soul on fire like Jon Snow in so long; she knows there's a story there; if she gives this up then what's left? More listicles about Marillion's hat collection?)

"I don't want to be understood—"

"—Why do you play hockey?" she butts in desperately. 

Jon looks at her like she's grown another head.

"What?"

"Why. do you. play hockey?" she asks slowly. 

It's the first question she wrote down; it's the first question she asks anyone that she profiles. Why does anyone do what they do? It's a simple question and yet to watch anyone try to answer it is always revealing. Our lives are such a pastiche of mistakes and good luck and impulse decisions and the slow, daily erosion of things that once were. So little feels within our control; we so rarely feel like we are fulfilling our purpose, that we even know our purpose. We do things because they're easy, because they make us money, because we're good at them, because our parents told us to do them. 

And Jon reveals himself: he looks embarrassed, put-off—but thoughtful. He looks away again, biting his lip.

"I—no one's actually ever asked me that," he admits. 

The lightbulb above them flickers as he considers his answer. He rubs the back of his neck, his pretty mouth twisting in something like wry embarrassment. "Um. I guess it's changed over the years..."

He trails off, then raises his electric gaze to her. She realizes belatedly that she is gripping her notebook so hard that it's making the papers crinkle; she also realizes there is silence beyond their door; the cardboard box fell at some point and the floor around them is littered with rolls of black tape. She watches him perceive that they are alone, that no one is listening anymore.

Alone, Jon seems to relax; his shoulders drop, he lets out a breath. "When I was a kid—"

"—Not the media story. I want the real story."

"I thought you said we were building something," he counters, hitting it back to her effortlessly. "Not digging for something."

(She is going to have to up her game if she wants to play Jon Snow. He is born to play games, to deflect, to manipulate the world around him, to predict the moves of others and slip around them, to feint and to fool. He is no flatterable fool like Margaery, no mercurial sybarite like Renly; no wounded knight like Brienne. She cannot charm him by flattering him.)

"The point is to build something real," she tries again. "Something new, something the world hasn't seen in quite this way before. We all know you had a bad childhood; that you got into hockey because you wanted to win prize money, and that the rest seems inevitable."

(Across the interviews she has read in the last few days, he's recited the same old story, nearly word-for-word, a thousand times. There are books that have been written on him that contain the rags-to-riches, bastard-prince story; but if he wants to spin a story for her he's going to have to do better than that tired cliche with her. He might be born to play people but she was born to read them, to know them, to cut through the layers to their core.) 

She stares at him head-on. "So why do you play hockey? For real this time."

"Why are you a journalist?"

(Again he hits it back to her; he thinks he's got her.)

"I'm a gossip columnist, actually," she admits, "and I'm a gossip columnist because it was an easy job to get and I needed one badly after my divorce, and didn't have the gravitas or the experience to get one of the jobs I wanted, like with the Times. People rarely take me seriously—Renly's been calling me 'puppy' and 'baby journalist' all night, so as you see, I'm not someone that makes a strong or powerful impression, not like you."

(An eye for an eye; she is hoping he will give her his.)

"Why did you get divorced?" he asks now, tilting his head as he watches her, tries to read her. Her mouth goes dry.

"Next question," she says, and he shakes his head, lips curving into a sardonic, 'got-you' sort of smirk.

"See? Some things are personal—"

"—I'm making it public. I'm writing an expose on Joffrey Baratheon; it's just waiting approval. It's not that it's too personal, it's that I've already told it and it's tied up with legal considerations." 

He raises his brows in a 'bullshit' kind of look, and she bites her lip. "It's a long story," she says now, "and I've only got a few minutes with you, I'm guessing. I'd rather talk about you."

Jon looks down at the floor. "I want to understand you as you'd like to be understood," she says again.

For all her vulnerability, for all of her offerings, Jon Snow remains unmoved as a stone god. She is losing her chance, her one chance, and desperation feels ugly but it's all she's got left—that and an excellent pair of Manolos. "That's why I'm here. I know my methods haven't been great, and I'm sorry for that—genuinely—but I learn from my mistakes, and I won't try something like this again. I'm here for a good reason, not a treacherous one. Believe me, if I didn't find you fascinating, I would never have wasted a good Thursday night on a hockey game."

She's a little breathless after her speech, and Jon Snow still is unreadable. He looks down at the floor, then up at her again. She cannot help but notice his lashes again.

"So what did you think of the game?" he asks.

He is a distant god demanding yet more of her, and she is desperate and fascinated enough to offer up whatever he asks. This time he asks her to humiliate herself by admitting she still Doesn't Get Hockey even after watching a few dozen gorgeous sweaty men smack into each other, which should be diverting enough on its own.

"It was violent, and stressful," she admits. "Brienne had to explain a lot of it to me, and Renly and his friends were sort of distracting... I wish I had just been sitting in the normal seats with Brienne, actually. She's a bit more my speed than Renly and his friends."

"Me too," Jon agrees, surprising her. He looks embarrassed when she eyes him. "She's usually around wherever Renly is, and Renly is wherever Loras is, so I've talked to her a lot. She knows a lot about hockey and isn't as hyper as the rest of them... It's kind of nice."

"What do you think of Renly, then?"

Sansa wonders if this will be her 'in' with this remote man. She senses that he is thawing to her, though she's not sure what exactly it was that worked to begin melting the ice.

"Renly?" He frowns. "I dunno. He's a little old for Loras, but Loras seems happy enough." He shrugs, looking put-off by the question. 

"So you're not uncomfortable with the fact that Loras Tyrell is gay?" 

"Next question," he says coolly, and Sansa cannot help but smile. 

"I think that was the first thing I learned about you that surprised and intrigued me," she says, and watches him look embarrassed again.

She is learning that quite a lot of things embarrass him. "You still haven't answered my question," she points out, because she can tell Jon is looking toward the door, listening to the silence on the other side, perceiving the passage of time. Her time is running out; she feels like this encounter has been momentous and yet she knows she has learned nothing at all, nothing she can show to Myranda, nothing that will garner page views.

"Look, aren't there other stories you could tell?" Jon asks at last. "Other people you could build something with?" 

"There are, of course. But I haven't found one like you in a long time, and I promised my boss that you were worth it." 

He wants her to beg? She isn't above begging. Not anymore, anyway. 

( _You need a new direction, Sansa_.)

"You don't have to—" he stammers, his neck flushing, and he looks away again, rubbing the back of his neck again. "—Look, fine. You can interview me. But it'll be on my terms, it'll be private, and I will approve whatever you—"

"—Of course," she puts in, trying not to sob with relief. "Of course. On your terms completely. I promise I won't ambush you in a locker room again. We can meet privately, and I won't record it. It will just be a conversation. You're the one in control."

Their eyes meet once more. She watches him draw in an unsteady breath, and she finds herself doing the same. Her mouth is still dry and her heart is pounding and her back is still against that stack of cardboard boxes, and he is so close that she can feel his electric pull; all of the little downy hairs on her body seem to move towards him. 

There are few men—perhaps none—like Jon Snow. 

"You're quick to give up control," he observes, and something within her breaks; ice cracking, a reverberation that is invisible but seismic. He is a blade.

"That's how an interview works," she counters, but her voice is raw and the words are lame. "I'm just a mirror for you; you are the artist and I'm the paint. Anything I write is just the marks you choose to make on the canvas."

"So then you never have to look at yourself, never have to make a mark yourself?" 

"Is that how you'd think of it?" she deflects, but she has never felt more naked. She watches Jon's throat move as he swallows. 

"Well, when put under pressure, you did make a mark," he points out at last, touching the ugly bruise across his nose and cheek, "so I'm not sure how happy you are as a mirror."

"And I'm not sure you recognize your own reflection," she breathes before she can stop herself. His shoulders rise and fall as he stares at her, a muscle in his jaw leaps, and it feels like there are bells ringing inside her head—

—and then the bulb flickers and dies at last, and they are in darkness, and the spell has been broken.

"Shit. Um, well, yeah. I have some open time," Jon mutters, forcing open the closet door. The locker room is empty, and reeks powerfully of male, and Sansa feels dazed and weak. "Give me your number and we can set something up." 

"Right, yes, of course." 

They take out their phones and Sansa wonders why her hands are shaking, and she tucks her elbows against her sides to try and stabilize her arms and hands. Jon Snow takes down her contact information and she watches her screen light up as he texts her a simple 'this is Jon'. "Thanks," she says, stowing her phone back in the pocket of her jacket.

Jon is avoiding her eyes. 

"Yeah, um, do you—"

"—PUPPY!" Renly bursts in through the doors, with Loras trailing on his heels, and Brienne looking hassled and weary behind them. Loras has changed into a grey sweatshirt and a beanie and looks outrageously, infuriatingly handsome; he beams at Sansa as Renly loops his arm through his. "Okay, you owe me ten, I knew they weren't going to do it, no one looks that stricken after closet sex," Renly says matter-of-factly to Loras, whose handsome face turns sour. 

"You bet _ten dollars_ —" Jon begins, baffled and flushed, and Renly roars with laughter.

"—Not dollars; something far better, Snow," he says, and Jon rolls his eyes as Brienne turns bright red. 

"I'll help you out to the parking lot, Sansa," she stammers, and drags Sansa out of the locker room. 

* * *

**Sansa Stark [11:37pm]** : Hi Jon, this is Sansa. 

**Jon Snow [11:38pm]:** i know. i gave you my number an hour ago

 **Sansa Stark [11:38pm]** : What day would you like to meet? And where would you like to meet? We can meet at a Kraken's, for example. 

_Jon Snow is typing..._

_Jon Snow is typing..._

_Jon Snow is typing..._

**Jon Snow [11:43pm]:** i'd rather meet in private.

 **Sansa Stark [11:44pm]:** That makes sense :) 

Sansa panics, looking around her studio apartment which is absolutely not fit for an interview. She cannot picture sitting on this couch with Jon Snow—it is a love seat; they cannot be that close again or she will lose her mind—and she cannot conceive of him looking upon her bed pushed up against the couch, piled with pillows and her handmade quilt, or her IKEA kitchen table, or her sloping floor or her many framed pictures. 

(Or the filing cabinet full of papers on her divorce.)

 **Sansa Stark [11:45pm]** : Would you like to meet at your house? Would that make you more comfortable?

_Jon Snow is typing..._

_Jon Snow is typing..._

_Jon Snow is typing..._

**Jon Snow [11:47pm]:** let's do that. 

**Jon Snow [11:48pm]:** saturday after my game? it's at 1pm. 

**Sansa Stark [11:50pm]** : That works perfectly! Saturday afternoon, after your game!

Her phone vibrates with his final text for the evening—it is his address. Sansa lays her phone down and stares at her ceiling. 

( _You need a new direction, Sansa_ )

(and,)

( _I'm not sure how happy you are as a mirror._ )


	7. Chapter 7

Sansa doesn't know why she prepares for the interview in part the way she would prepare for a date. 

(Okay, she does know why.)

It's a silly thought anyway, as she's not even _considered_ dating since before Joffrey. Not to mention she was a very different person the last time the thought of a man compelled her to shave her legs. 

She knows she's being ridiculous, but Sansa has always given into her follies, at least in part. So she's working herself into a giddy fluster over a badass hockey player—so what? Shouldn't life be enjoyed? Shouldn't pretty things be worn, shouldn't sweet things be eaten, shouldn't handsome men be admired?

(Besides, there is a small piece of her that believes that that part of her life—the romantic part—is over, anyway. No one is ever going to fall in love with _her_ ; no one is ever going to marry her. Not for love, anyway. So she lets herself be a tourist in this endeavor, enjoying the folly of preparing for a date all the while knowing it isn't one, knowing that she is being silly, knowing that she will look back on her nervousness and panic that she feels today, and laugh at herself.)

And anyway, she's always less rational when she hasn't slept enough, and that's certainly been the case this week. 

("Um. _Girl_. You do know you're turning into a meme, right?" Myranda had said upon swinging past Sansa's cubicle on Friday, her strong tuberose perfume announcing her presence long before she poked her head around the edge of the cube. She had handed Sansa a lemoncake-flavored latte as though it were acetaminophen, pursing her lips and studying Sansa's uncharacteristically-messy cubicle. "Like, you know that one meme, with the guy, and the board, and the pins—"

"—Yes, I know it, thank you," Sansa had snapped, before hastily fixing her sweetest smile. "Thanks so much for the latte. Sorry, I'm a little under-slept." 

"No kidding," Myranda had grimaced, eyeing Sansa's dark circles. "How's the Jon Snow story going? How was the game? He had a kind of ugly moment last night, but he could totally 'board' me too..." 

Sansa had turned over her phone to hide the screen, even though there was nothing there to incriminate her. The last text they had exchanged had been her thanking him for supplying his address, and he had said nothing in return. 

And no, of course she wasn't obsessively checking her phone.

"Yes, he did, didn't he? I'm including that in the piece. And thanks, it's going really well!" 

She hadn't told Myranda about her Saturday interview yet. Obviously. 

(Why wouldn't she tell her boss about the interview? It almost felt like self-sabotage, it almost felt like perhaps she was taking this imagined feeling of a date seriously... She was going to Jon Snow's house on assignment, not on a date.) 

(Why couldn't she tell Myranda about it?)

Myranda had looked at her shrewdly, then buried the look. For all of Myranda's silliness, she was an insightful woman, and she saw more than she let on or acknowledged. As Sansa had met Myranda's gaze, she had wondered if Myranda could guess that she was withholding truths. She'd swallowed. She was usually good at hiding her feelings, but then, Myranda was good at digging them up. 

After taking a quick sweep around the open-plan office for anyone listening, Myranda had leaned in, her elegant leather jacket crinkling with the movement, her red nails vivid as she held the edge of the cubicle.

"Awesome. Well, look, I haven't heard from Petyr on your article. We might want to hurry up on whatever the Jon Snow story is," she'd said quietly. "I'm fresh out of ideas, to be honest. That model, Lancel Lannister, joined a cult and, like, no one seems to give a shit! He's wearing robes and he shaved his head and everything! I wrote a freaking _zinger_ of a post about it and it got, like, ten views. Seriously, we're facing a grim few months if we don't turn it around."

Sansa shook her head sympathetically, but her stomach had lurched. "So! If you _happen_ to be sitting on fabulous Jon Snow material, don't let it sit too long, okay?" 

"Yes, of course," Sansa had reassured her. Myranda had smiled but it hadn't reached her eyes, and Sansa had watched her bustle back to her office and, uncharacteristic for her, close the door behind her.) 

(So she hasn't slept; so she's seesawed between enjoying that singular frivolity of knowing she is going to spend time with an unusual, compelling man, and trying not to panic about where her career is going. She has stayed awake in bed with her laptop and lemon tea, obsessively watching old clips of interviews and adding to her growing pile of notes and her timeline on Jon Snow and the transformation that she knows—she _knows_ it—is taking place within him.)

(As her list of disjointed questions begins to gel and develop into a real interview guide, her sense of control grows; yet at the same time, so does her sense of him as a person.)

Saturday dawns murky and cold. There's talk of early-winter weather, of wintry mixes and sleet, but no one ever takes it seriously this time of year, and Sansa ignores it. She packs her satchel with her recorder—just in case he changes his mind on being recorded; it would really help her—and her notes on him, and extra pens. After going back and forth on what to wear, she chooses her plainest sweater and boots, but spends an inordinate amount of time on her hair and makeup. 

He is clearly observant; he will likely be able to tell she over-thought this. She thinks this as she wipes off the lipstick she put on, deciding it's too obvious. Just in case, she packs her makeup bag as well. 

It's time to head out.

Jon Snow lives outside of the city, far from the glitter and glamor of King's Landing, and it is an hour's drive to his house. She listens to the game highlights on the radio—Jon ends up in the penalty box twice; the commentator remarks on his age again, as well as Tormund's—as she navigates her Mini Cooper out of the city and further north. 

The headache of traffic dissipates the further she gets from King's Landing, until she is past the choked suburbs, and now among rolling hills and meandering clutches of forest. What will his house look like? He is one of the highest-paid hockey players in the league, if not the highest, so it will probably be a new house, with fake windows and a movie theater in the basement; a hot tub and a pool table; high walls and a gate with an intercom. 

What must it be like, to have such wealth after so many years of poverty and sacrifice? Is it a relief, or is it overwhelming? Does it matter to him? Did the glimmering promise of wealth ever drive him? All of these things are part of her interview guide that she developed, because much as her tummy is tight with nerves that make this feel like a date, at the end of the day it is not. 

At the end of the day, her career is riding on the success of this single, glittering chance she has at a real, private conversation with Jon Snow—the most notoriously private celebrity there is. 

She's getting into an older part of the countryside—crumbling stone walls choked with vines, burned-out barns, fieldstone houses that have seen the world change around them. She passes grassy hills dotted with glossy black cows, one-way roads with curving little bridges that hop over streams. It's hard to believe a professional athlete would prefer this kind of place, but she supposes he must have ordered a new house to be built out here in the peace and quiet. 

Her maps app shows that she is nearly there, and when she turns onto a pothole-ridden road, lined with very high, very old stone walls, it informs her, 'you have arrived.'

* * *

_Direwolves Whatsapp Group Chat, Saturday Afternoon_

_~Pypar Mummer, 3:46pm:_ so are we placing any bets on where snow booked it off to? that redhead from the other night was p cute 

_~Pypar Mummer, 3:46pm:_ but if i were going off to meet a cute redhead i would look a LITTLE more cheerful than that

 _~Edd Tollett, 3:46pm_ : probably a family emergency. i bet someone died

 _~Pypar Mummer, 3:47pm_ : oh my god why do you ALWAYS assume someone died??

 _~Edd Tollett, 3:47pm_ : people die every minute of every day 

_~Edd Tollett, 3:48pm:_ part of the cycle of life... 

_~Edd Tollett, 3:48pm_ : seventy-odd years of crushing dissatisfaction and then 

_~Edd Tollett, 3:48pm:_ gone 

_~Edd Tollet, 3:48pm_ : nothing

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:49pm:_ well i bet he's getting laid or getting into a barfight

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:49pm_ : the no-fucks-given way he played today? that backhanded goal he sneaked right around martell? i would go get laid or start a fight

 _~Pypar Mummer, 3:50pm_ : tollett thinks of death, tyrell thinks of sex and fighting... cool 

_~Grenn Aurochs, 3:51pm_ : no guys he seemed rly weird and liek out of it 

_~Grenn Aurochs, 3:52pm:_ i dont even thnk he waz looking wen he scored that last goal

 _~Grenn Aurochs, 3:52pm_ : nd he didnt even yell @ me 4 being late 2day

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:53pm_ : well that's because you weren't late

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:53pm_ : i changed your watch 

_~Loras Tyrell, 3:54pm_ : (also how does your phone even let you make those typos?)

~ _Loras Tyrell, 3:54pm_ : (are you somehow on a flip phone?)

 _~Grenn Aurochs, 3:54pm_ : o 

_~Grenn Aurochs, 3:54pm_ : so wat time is it

 _~Pypar Mummer, 3:55pm_ : not important, WHERE do we think snow is? 

_~Loras Tyrell, 3:55pm:_ probably robbing a bank, i'd say 

_~Loras Tyrell, 3:56pm_ : or like getting a tattoo 

_~Pypar Mummer, 3:57pm_ : is...is that your final answer?

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:57pm_ : i just think he'd look good with one 

_~Tormund Giantsbane, 3:58pm_ : he has one.

 _~Loras Tyrell, 3:58pm_ : WHAT

 _~Pypar Mummer, 3:58pm_ : UM WHAT HELLO TORMUND I DIDN'T KNOW YOU COULD TYPE

 _~Edd Tollett, 3:58pm_ : please explain 

_~Edd Tollett, 3:58pm_ : we have all seen each other naked so many times... where could it possibly be 

_~Pypar Mummer, 3:59pm:_ guys he is trolling us, he's just trying to distract us from the question at hand 

_~Loras Tyrell, 3:59pm_ : so how close have you been looking, tollett?

 _~Edd Tollett, 3:59pm_ : if snow had a tattoo we'd have seen it 

_~Pypar Mummer, 4:00pm_ : oh my god please focus 

_~Pypar Mummer, 4:01pm_ : tormund

 _~Pypar Mummer, 4:01pm_ : toRMUND 

_~Pypar Mummer, 4:02pm_ : WHERE DO YOU THINK SNOW WENT 

_~Loras Tyrell, 4:03pm_ : his phone's dead, mummer, and he is for SURE getting laid rn

 _~Loras Tyrell, 4:03pm:_ face it, snow is robbing a bank 

_~Loras Tyrell, 4:04pm_ : [flaming_elmo.gif]

* * *

Sansa comes to a stop in front of a gate set into a stone wall. The wall is old, but the gate looks new, and sure enough, she spots an intercom and a sensor, as well as a discreet security camera, and she tries to ignore a flicker of disappointment. She doesn't know why it matters but she had hoped he wasn't one of _those_ athletes; he must be, of course. 

She gets out of the car, checking her makeup one last time, and then hits the intercom. Is a butler going to greet her, she wonders? 

"Hi, this is Sansa Stark," she says as she peers through the wrought-iron gate. The driveway is winding, shrouded by trees, and she can't see the house through the thick trees. "I'm here for the interview." 

There's a long pause, and she wonders if perhaps she's beat him home. The game did go into overtime, after all, and the stadium is closer to his house than she is...

"Hi, Sansa." His voice is deeper, more gravelly, over the intercom, and it makes her belly do a little jump. "Hold on... there it is." 

There's a metallic shift, and then the heavy wrought-iron gate is sliding out of her way. 

This is it.

She drives along the winding drive, past ancient oaks and scrubby pines, bone-white sycamores with naked branches. Her palms are now growing clammy at the prospect of all this afternoon and evening might offer. 

At one point she passes deep tread marks skidding off into the grass, like someone in a truck had a few too many drinks and leaned on the gas, and she makes a mental note of it. It's a strangely violent sight on an otherwise idyllic, bucolic landscape, and though Jon must have made them—what other option is there?—for some reason she cannot picture him doing so. 

(Then again, perhaps drunk driving is part of his so-called chaos tour? He is such a tightly-controlled man spinning out of said control; perhaps this isn't an evolution but a downward spiral.)

(The thought seems unbearably sad; for some reason she rejects it out of hand. Jon Snow does not drink and drive. She tells herself she knows it, and then wonders if his status and his power make her unwilling to accept evidence that she otherwise would admit or perch on and expand upon.) 

At last the house comes into view—and it's nothing like she expected. 

For all the length of the drive and the security of the gate, the house is small—and old. It's an old fieldstone house, probably historic, and you can tell it's actually old because it has none of the grandeur of newer stone houses, and its windows and door have the narrowness of a house not built in this century, or even the last. It appeals to the historian in her that appreciates hidden doors and walls covered in vines, old books with peeling letters and love notes written in their pages. It has deep sash windows and black shutters, and smoke is curling from the chimney. 

The only hints of Jon's wealth and status are the sleek black car parked in the drive—it is costly and sporty; Robb and his friends would be drooling; but she doesn't recognize the make—and the rolling hills in all directions signaling how much of the property belongs to him. 

As Sansa gets out of the car she hears a single harsh bark, and then the front door swings open, and Jon is there. 

His face is still bruised from her shoe, though the bruise is fading to a greenish yellow; he's wearing a simple dark jumper with the sleeves pushed up, and jeans. His hair is wet. A large white dog slips past him and pads onto the driveway, just as a light mix of rain and snow begins to fall, stinging her cheeks and ruining her hair. 

"That's Ghost," Jon explains, stepping outside with the dog as Sansa collects her things to bring inside. She notes that he's wearing dark jeans and simple, tasteful sneakers; she wonders if a woman picked them out for him. Ghost circles back to Jon for another pat on the head—Jon gives him one, absently, not even thinking of it—before looking back at Sansa with benign interest. Sansa cannot help but think of high stone walls and tender land inside; what secret little house waits beyond the high stone walls and locked gate that Jon puts up? What tire treads scar his heart?

"He's beautiful." To her surprise, Jon comes and takes her books and bag from her wordlessly, and she thinks of those violent tracks again as their hands brush. "That's one effective security system you have." 

"Oh, yeah." A shadow passes over his face, and he turns from her. "It's kind of annoying, but..." he doesn't finish the thought as she steps inside, and he reaches behind her to pull the door shut, and then they are in a cramped entryway, old floorboards squeaking beneath their feet. The raftered ceilings are low, and old boots slump beneath a narrow table that serves as a landing place for keys and a worn black leather leash. A jacket and knit hat hang on a hook set into the wall, and a stack of mail is abandoned on the table beside the leash. It is startlingly normal. 

(There are no signs of a woman; there are no signs of another human being at all.)

"...but necessary?" Sansa probes, lifting her gaze to meet Jon's.

The entryway is a little dark, and as he looks at her, he reaches past her and flicks on a light. 

"I guess the interview's starting?" he says dryly. 

"It _is_ what I came for," she begins—but then his phone begins ringing, a high-pitched tone that makes them both jump, and he hastily shuts the ring off. "Oh—do you need to—"

"—No, forget it, it's not important—" It rings again and, with a muscle twitching in his jaw, and a look of deep frustration and resentment, he reaches into his pocket and turns the phone off completely. 

(She realizes he has shaved; he had scruff during today's game, when she caught the opening. He looks younger for it, resembling more closely the clean-cut star athlete of the last few years, who obediently gave vanilla-flavored post-game interviews and obtained a Nike sponsorship, and resembling less the man who kissed his alternate on the neck and smashed Chett Hagsmire into the boards.)

"The interview can start whenever you like," she reassures him, unsettled by the look on his face just now at his ringing phone. "I told you, you're in control here."

As soon as the words are out, she regrets them. She realizes how quiet the house is as their eyes meet, quiet enough that she can hear herself swallow, quiet enough that she can hear the breath he draws in. He lowers his gaze, letting it trace her face, and she wonders if he is observing her makeup, observing all the little signs that she cares too much about this interview. 

His lips twist and he scoffs, looking away. 

"Doesn't feel like it," he says in a low voice, and he turns away from her. She is hit with a blast of his scent, clean and masculine and reassuring. She forgot how tempting a good-smelling man was; something in her is unfurling, coming back to life, and she wishes it wouldn't. Not right now. Not when she is trying to save her career. She cannot deal with a thing she thought was dead coming back to life right _now._ "Come on into the kitchen, I guess. We can sit there. I, um, was just starting on dinner. You can have some."

He turns and walks down the narrow hall, toward the kitchen in the back, and Ghost gives her a last look before following. 

Sansa stands in the entryway for a moment. When she glances out the little panel of glass in the doorway, her red Mini is already covered in a blanket of wet, annoying snow, but she'll deal with that problem later. 

When she turns back, she can hear a sink turning on and the clang of pots against pans. She studies the tidy but dirty row of boots along the wall; the care with which he has rolled up Ghost's ancient black leash; the lack of photographs (her own apartment is filled with mismatched photographs, and cheaply-framed prints that she bought at IKEA for her little studio). She studies the stack of mail on the narrow table, and the letter on top, hand-addressed to Jon and unopened, is from a D. TARGARYEN, written confidently in red ink.

Jon leans into the hallway. "Are you coming...?"

"Yes!" She smiles at him and he looks taken aback, like she's slapped him, and she wonders what she's done. "I was just looking out at the snow, sorry, I'll be right there." 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell i hate cooking? because i fucking hate cooking

_Waymar Royce created the group 'The Old Guard'_

_Waymar Royce has added Oberyn Martell and Tormund Giantsbane_

_Waymar Royce [4:36pm]:_ Hey Giantsbane! Hey Martell!

 _Waymar Royce [4:36pm]:_ Nice game today - you both played really well. I watched most of the game during my weight training session.

 _Oberyn Martell [4:37pm]:_ thanks. i was really worried about your opinion

 _Waymar Royce [4:37pm]:_ :|

 _Waymar Royce [4:38pm]:_ Just wanted to check in and see if all was OK with Snow?

 _Tormund Giantsbane [4:39pm]:_ ?

 _Waymar Royce [4:39pm]:_ The boarding thing on Thurs., then today he got a few penalties... Just worried about him. He used to play a really clean game, and I know the boarding could have been an accident - we all know Hagsmire makes those sharp turns, and I've spoken with him about it - but he's usually too fast for that.

 _Oberyn Martell [4:40pm]:_ hags had it coming ;-*

 _Waymar Royce [4:41pm]:_ They do have some bad blood. I did speak to him after the game about his attitude with Snow.

 _Oberyn Martell [4:41pm]:_ his attitude?

 _Oberyn Martell [4:42pm]:_ he almost ended snows career

 _Tormund Giantsbane [4:50pm]:_ not sure why you think this is your business royce

 _Tormund Giantsbane [4:50pm]:_ your not on our team... neither is martell

 _Waymar Royce [4:51pm]:_ Whoa! No hard feelings, Giantsbane! Once a teammate, always a teammate. Snow and I were rookies together, and I still feel connected to you and Snow, Giantsbane. I learned a lot by teaching you both.

 _Oberyn Martell [4:51pm]:_ lmao. what.

 _Waymar Royce [4:53pm]:_ And anyway, I saw you talking to him during the game today, Martell, and it looked like a serious discussion. So I thought one of you might have some insight?

 _Oberyn Martell [4:53pm]:_ i was wondering wtf happened to his face

 _Oberyn Martell [4:53pm]:_ he told me to get fucked... cannot blame him

 _Oberyn Martell [4:54pm]:_ it was a personal question

 _Tormund Giantsbane [4:55pm]:_ it was for a good cause

 _Oberyn Martell [4:56pm]:_ pussy?

 _Waymar Royce [4:56pm]:_ WOW okay let's keep it clean, guys!

 _Tormund Giantsbane [4:57pm]:_ yes

 _Waymar Royce [4:58pm]:_ Wait. 'Yes' let's keep it clean or 'yes' Jon Snow somehow got bruised in the quest for ...women?

 _Waymar Royce [5:07pm]:_ I know you saw this, Giantsbane. 

_Waymar Royce [6:08pm]:_ Giantsbane?

* * *

Jon's kitchen shows the house's true age, with its low, raftered ceilings, narrow whitewashed cabinets, and unglamorous appliances. At the other end, mullioned doors open out onto a vast yard, and from here Sansa can see the snow falling onto rolling hills that dissolve into trees. There's another old pair of boots by the doors, their treads caked with mud, and a worn doormat with muddy tracks. She can picture Jon and Ghost setting off in the lavender dawn, wandering those lonely hills together, the wind whipping through Jon's hair as he follows his dog and gets lost in his thoughts.

(What does he think about when he's not on the ice?)

Sansa tentatively sets her things down on the kitchen table, hyperaware of every movement, every squeak of her wet boots on the floor, every breath. Jon's lean back is to her, and although he looks relaxed, she detects little signs of tension—he seems overly interested in what's on the stove—that make her think, again, of the security camera.

(What is he so afraid of people learning about him? Why have such high walls to protect something so humble?)

"So... is your exposé going to get published?" 

"I don't know yet," she admits, thrown off by the question. She doesn't know why she's surprised that he would remember. "It's still tied up with Legal."

"Must be a big deal." 

Jon turns away from the stove and leans his hip against the counter, crossing his arms. He's got a restless energy to him that, in turn, makes her restless—she is a natural mirror, after all—so she finds herself pointlessly shuffling her things on his table, trying not to think about how his sweater twists over his arms. "It must have been hard to write."

"Oh, I don't know, it's really not interesting," she dismisses, aware of Jon's gaze. "It was just my life at the time. I thought it would be harder to write, but it's been so long—I don't even feel like it happened to me. It happened to a different version of me, I guess is what I mean. I'm not the same person I was, back then."

She bites her lip. Ugh. Why is she still talking?

"Is this a lead-in to talking about my age?" Jon guesses warily. His gaze drops to her bitten lip; is he trying to read her?

"No, actually." It's the truth; she felt nervous so she gave more detail than she might have otherwise.

She isn't usually a nervous talker—she is too polite for it—but Jon Snow unsettles her, makes her feel like she's carrying a dozen skeins of yarn and they keep escaping, dropping from her hold and bouncing away. "I was just trying to explain that it doesn't feel like a big deal anymore. Like, it's been long enough that I don't... I don't consider it part of my identity anymore. I've let it go."

He looks down, picking at his short nails. There is a physicality to him that makes him feel more immediate, more present, to her. She notices the way his teeth dig into his soft lip; she notices the way his sweater drapes over his shoulders and pulls along the muscle of his arms; she notices the raw, reddened skin of his knuckles. It's like putting on glasses; she has not really noticed a man in so long, and now he is in her line of sight, so vivid and crisp and real that it is dizzying. She forgot what it felt like. 

(And maybe life was easier without it, because she feels clumsy and distracted, and if there is anyone she needs to be sharp and clever for, it is Jon Snow.)

So she masters herself, and tries to think of the Sansa she imagined when she bought the Manolos. That Sansa would not be so unsettled by a complex and uncommon man— _that_ Sansa would not be flustered by _biceps_ , for god's sake. She aligns her notebook and pens, and clears her throat. "But we might as well talk about your age, since it's the topic you won't let anyone broach."

"And that's the topic you lead with?" he wonders dryly.

She returns the look unflinchingly. She is Manolo!Sansa, dammit.

"You're thirty-three. The average player on your team is twenty-three," she says evenly. "It's an obvious disparity."

(Boom.)

"I also score a point and a half on average per game—the average player doesn't begin to approach that," he fires back, face flushing briefly. "You want to talk about obvious disparities?"

When she doesn't reply, Jon rolls his eyes and turns back to the stove. "I don't have some deeper answer for you. What I've said in every other interview was the truth: I'm going to play as long as I enjoy it, and I guess I'm going to get these stupid questions every season until I finally do retire."

She pulls the chair out to sit down, and it scrapes on the floor. Jon looks back at the noise, watching as she settles down and opens her notebook. He doesn't offer more, though; he continues his work at the stove with unnecessarily brusque movements. The interview is already getting away from her; she must pull back on the yarn.

"I told you. You're the one—" she begins, then falters.

This time he turns around, and she can't bring herself to say it again, because somehow it has a different dimension, a different meaning, now that he's turned to look at her again. _You're the one in control._ And he's watching her expectantly, archly, like he's testing her nerve.

( _Jon Snow always wins face-offs. You don't want to go up against him,_ Robb told her over the phone when she asked.)

"Yeah?" he probes. "I'm the one...?"

He's daring her, luring her to unsteady ground, trying to prove that she doesn't have the moxie or the spirit. 

"—You're the one in control," she finishes, watches his brow twitch. "So what do you want the world to know about your age?"

Something has shifted between them. The game has begun in earnest. Jon Snow is scanning her, sizing up her weaknesses and deciding where he'll strike first. His gaze drops again, then lifts back to her eyes. He's testing her ice.

"You said it's a little of my perspective—and a little of yours," he ventures slowly. "So what perspective are you bringing to it?"

"I'm a woman. Age is always going to be a sensitive topic for me," Sansa says easily, because she was ready to hit this one back. In this regard, she does have an angle.

She has thought, on repeat, of Margaery's comment from that first night. Of expiration dates and professional athletes, of ticking clocks and birthdays. "So I understand in part how you feel about it. Once you're no longer the pretty, virginal—" his brows lift so subtly at the word, "—ingenue, everyone wants to know when you're going to settle down. I'm divorced, without children, not yet old enough to be invisible, but not young enough to pretend I've got a blank slate."

It's an old technique, and one she relies on often, to hold up a mirror to her interviewee, but it's a tainted strategy now. He has already called her on it, but she's trying it anyway, because at least in this regard, she does feel like a mirror. Or he's her mirror; it is hard to find the seam.

"You are pretty; you probably always will be." He looks back at the stove. "I don't know about the rest."

(So he's trying to unseat her now with a compliment? Trying to distract her? But even as his words make the skin at her wrists and behind her ears hot, she cannot be derailed.)

(Also— _just_ pretty?!)

"My point," she says, "is that it's every woman's experience, if they're unmarried and over the age of twenty-five. I understand the anger."

Jon scoffs.

"Maybe however Joffrey Baratheon thinks about women isn't representative of the rest of the world. Sounds like a bullshit point of view to me. None of the guys I respect think like that—I don't think like that."

He retrieves a bag of lettuce from the refrigerator; she averts her eyes. "Are you alright with this dressing?" He holds up a bottle and she nods, reminded that they are going to be eating together. She wishes they weren't, and then chides herself for thinking it, because she knows why she is anxious to eat in front of him, and it's entirely unprofessional. 

"So how _do_ you think about women, then?"

Jon's eyes briefly narrow into knowing, shrewd crescents; his lips twist into a smirk. " _Do_ you think about women?" she corrects, and thinks of the clip of him—accidentally or not—kissing Tormund Giantsbane's neck. 

"You sound like you have theories," he notes. 

"You kissed Tormund Giantsbane's neck; you ensured Loras Tyrell would endure no bullying for his sexuality; you haven't appeared to have a girlfriend in a very long time, as far as I can tell."

"And that means I don't think about women?" He still looks amused as he opens the bag and empties it into a colander. 

"It might," she hedges. He bites his lip.

"I think about women," he promises. She wets her lips. 

"But no girlfriend?"

She can tell he expected this question, that he prepared for it, because he lets out a breath.

"I was seeing someone for a long time, but it ended. It was never going to last, anyway."

There is a bitterness to his voice now, and she feels as though she's finally breaking ground. She has to be careful; she has to be subtle. He is giving her a rare opening, but if she messes this one up, she knows he will slam the door again. He is always playing, she thinks; he is always strategizing, always testing, always watching.

(But she is, too.)

She gets to her feet and stands beside him at the sink, and he shoots her a wary look as she points at the greens.

"Do you want help with that?" 

"Sure. Thanks," he says cautiously, but now that her hands are occupied too, he seems to relax a little. His movements are less self-conscious, more natural. He needs, she thinks, to not feel like he is being examined, and the irony of a man who has thousands of people wear his name and shout it at the tops of their lungs on a weekly basis _not_ wanting the spotlight is not lost on her.

"So why wasn't it going to work out anyway?" There's a window above the sink; the weather is a wintry mix turning to rain, and for some reason it feels like a letdown. "The relationship, I mean."

"Oh, just—" he curses at something on the stove and lets out a hot breath. "I don't know, actually."

She waits. "A lot of things. Some things I can control and some I can't." 

"Were you sad when it ended?"

"I should have been," Jon says, thinking. "But when we met—things were different. Circumstances were different. I didn't..."

He trails off, and when she looks at him, he's biting his lip again, running a hand over his hair. "Look, when I got injured, my life changed in a big way. What I wanted—what I felt I could ask for from someone—changed."

It is a needle that must be threaded carefully; but Sansa has always been precise.

"I can understand that," she says, still working. "I still remember the day I decided to hire a lawyer and pursue the divorce. I'd always assumed I'd have a family of my own and I can remember getting a coffee afterwards and just sitting there, watching a family go by and thinking, well, there goes that."

It is a highly personal thing to admit. The usual urge to cry—at every little thing—wells up but she squashes it as she turns off the sink. She can feel Jon looking at her. 

"Yeah," he says quietly, "it was like that. Just like that, actually. I don't know how you knew."

They are quiet as they work independently, as she tries to get her bearings. She did not expect him to reveal anything, and now she has been wrong-footed. The icy rain lashes against the windows, against the mullioned doors, and hail taps at the glass. "Gonna be hell driving in this," he remarks, nodding to the window. "We should eat quickly so you can head out safely. What other questions did you have?"

They eat together, and Jon tells her about the team—his friendship with Tormund, who was loyal to him even while he was injured, and ensured, by bullying the coach and general manager, that a new captain was not named in the meantime; his strained negotiations with the Direwolves' general manager to prohibit media from the dressing room; the Whatsapp group chat with the other players that he tends to ignore, though he will always answer a text from Tormund as soon as he receives it. He tells her about how he tries to prepare the younger players for harassment from the media—"a lot of these guys are not that bright," he explains with a grimace, "and they don't think about how they're coming across,"—and he tells her about what it was like to film a commercial for Nike in his own home ("they told me I should redecorate."). 

But nothing approaches the depth of _that_ moment, the connection she felt when he said, _yeah, it was like that_. And when his house phone rings and he blanches and curses and leaves the kitchen to take it, Sansa slumps in her seat and looks at her notebook. He is in another room, and though she can hear the rhythm of his voice, she cannot hear the words, and cannot guess at the nature of the call.

He has given her plenty, and yet she feels like she's only glimpsed something through a cracked door that he has since closed again. It is almost time to go, and yet she is leaving empty-handed. Laden with yarn, and none of it means a thing. It adds up to a fine enough profile, but nothing more than that.

Jon comes back into the room, looking flushed and distracted, and something in her shifts again as their eyes meet, as she perceives how the phone call, whatever it was, has changed his mood.

He is so real to her, and so immediate, and so human—she cannot explain it.

She cannot stop thinking of how his voice sounded when he said _yeah, it was like that_ —the grief, the anger, the bitterness. And she thinks of the picture Myranda has printed out of him on her bulletin board at work—a joke, but she has objectified him all the same—and she thinks of all the speculation on the internet about him, and yet here he is, in front of her, with his own private struggles and his own disappointments and frustrations, and she just... 

She cannot do this. She should not do this.

"I should go," she says. 

( _You need a new direction, Sansa_.)

She anticipates Jon disagreeing, but he looks at her, then just shrugs, suddenly closed off, and he looks out the window. 

"Yeah, the weather's bad," he agrees, suddenly brusque.

"Let me just help you clear this—"

She rises to her feet and picks up her plate, but he steps forward and touches her arm, and they each draw back sharply. 

"Um, forget it, don't worry about it," he reassures her, not meeting her eyes. "Seriously, it's really icy out there, I guess we lost track of time." 

The atmosphere has changed and she's not sure if it's her doing or his, but now they cannot meet each other's eyes. She grabs her coat and Jon walks with her to the entryway, and pulls on his own coat to walk her out to her car. They each pull their hoods on as they stand in the freezing rain beside her Mini. 

"Well, thank you," she says over the rain, shielding her eyes. "Like I said, I'll send you the article. I won't publish anything you don't approve." 

"Yeah, sure," Jon says vaguely, studying her car. "Are you going to be alright? Maybe—"

"—Yes, yes, it's fine," she interrupts, hastily unlocking her car and dumping her things in the passenger side. To avoid the question of how to part—do they shake hands? Do they embrace?—she walks around to the other side. "I'll let you get out of this rain—thank you again."

"Sansa," he begins, but she's already sliding into the Mini, waving, and then she has shut him out. 

Her heart is pounding and her face is wet from the freezing rain. In her peripheral vision she can see that Jon is still there, hood up, watching her car, and she starts the car and begins driving. 

The drive is a little icy, and the freezing rain is blinding. Normally Sansa listens to music or a podcast when she drives, but the weather is so intense that she needs the silence to focus. She squints into the night, almost grateful for the distraction of the weather, because an avalanche of emotions await her and she's just not ready.

Something has changed; she has hit a wall. What is she going to do?

She has nothing on Jon Snow, not really; nothing except a powerful intuition about him, a sense that he is some uncatchable magic, some silvery reward just out of her reach, and that is not a story, at least, it's not one that will get the Vale pageviews. She is watching her career slip through her fingers just as she is watching herself come back to life, but what does it matter that the trees are silvered with new buds when there is nothing to bloom for?

What is she going to do?

She could drive back, march up to his door, demand that he give her more. She could doggedly twist his words into something else, send it to Myranda, and tell him she forgot to get his approval. There are any number of ways this situation could be salvaged, and yet—

—A figure flashes in her headlights; Sansa swerves, and skids off the drive and into darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the disgustingly, infuriatingly talented redbelles made another gif set for this story - [ it is this one ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/redbelles/644414909445177344) \- and you should go look at it and reblog it. i personally have looked at it an embarrassing number of times since she made it.

Sansa hits the brakes and braces herself for impact as the Mini bounces and jostles along the mud and grass, rumbling over rock, spinning out and coming to a lurching halt just short of a large pine. 

Oh god. 

Had the tree been a foot to the right, the car would have struck its massive trunk.

For a long moment there's just her shaking hands and her pounding heart and her hoarse gasps and the freezing rain lashing against the car.

She blinks, seeing that figure rendered white by her headlights every time she closes her eyes, like a strobe, and she grips the steering wheel. 

_No impact,_ she told herself; she didn't hit anything or she would have felt it. There was no impact, she didn't hurt anyone or anything, there was no impact. It takes a moment to register that there are hot tears of shock tracking down her cheeks as she peers into the darkness, but she sees nothing. 

But she knows there was someone there—not a some _thing_ ; a some _one_ —which means there is someone on Jon's property who shouldn't be. 

With wildly shaking hands, she clumsily hits his contact on her phone's screen, and leans her head against the steering wheel to try and calm down as she hears the dial tone. 

Jon picks up on the first ring. 

"Sansa?" His voice is wary but soft, a hidden fawn peering from shadowed trees.

"I—I almost hit—there's someone on your property," she stammers, and hears him begin to speak, "—I didn't hit them, I didn't see—"

"—Sansa," he raises his voice above hers, "are you alright?"

"Oh." She wipes at her cheeks with a shaking hand. "Yes, yes. I think I'm—I mean the Mini is fine, I didn't hit—"

"—But are you? Are you—wait, where are you? Never mind, I'll be right there, I'll find you." He lets out a hot breath. "Just—just lock the doors, alright? Stay put, and lock the doors. I'll be there in a minute. Are you going to lock the doors?" 

"Yes—"

"—Good, I'll be right there." 

He hangs up before she can say goodbye, and Sansa sits there in numb silence, holding her phone and waiting for her heart to stop pounding. It takes her a moment to do as he instructed, and lock the doors of her car, and a new fear takes over. She feels like a trapped animal, and as the shaking begins to fade, she looks around, squinting into the darkness, but the night is simply too dark and slick, like everything's coated in ink. 

Who _was_ that? 

She thought it might have been a man, but she couldn't be sure. The night seems so ugly now, so unfriendly, at the thought of a strange man wandering Jon's property. All of this sprawling land suddenly takes on the feeling of harsh wilderness, not gentle countryside. And how did they get past his high walls and gate? How—

"Sansa," she hears from outside the car door. Jon's there in a windbreaker with the hood up, holding a flashlight, Ghost beside him. He motions for her to unlock her car door, and she does, getting out on shaky legs. The sound of the rain is an immediate roar when she opens the door, and she stumbles slightly, realizing too late that her legs are still numb with shock; Jon grabs her, holding onto her upper arms and steadying her with an immediacy and strength that reminds her, again, of his physicality.

"I didn't see—"

"—Forget it, let's go back to the house," Jon calls over the rain, his grip hard on her arms. He's looking over her shoulder at the Mini. "You drove over rock. There's no way you should drive tonight; your car might be fucked." 

Together, they look back at her car's path. There are deep treads leading off the drive, and a swath of rocky soil that makes her cringe. What did that do to her undercarriage? "Come on," he says, still gripping her arms. "Grab your stuff." 

There is a directness to his words that makes her obey at once; she locks the door and then Jon is guiding her along the grass, with Ghost padding beside them, looking around and snarling every now and then, hackles raised. Jon is looking around, too—not in fear but, as far as she can read, in rage. His grip is tight and he doesn't speak, just scans their surroundings continuously, never letting go of her arm, and she allows herself to be led back into his house. 

Inside they are both breathless, shaking from cold, and Sansa realizes she is still shaking as Jon shucks off his coat and hangs it on the hook beside the door. He takes her bag from her and hangs it up with practical, assured movements—almost like they know each other well. 

"I—do you know—do you have a stalker?" she blurts as Jon helps her out of her coat. He won't meet her eyes. "Are you, like, in danger?"

"No," he says disgustedly. He casts a look of fury out at the rain, his hand brushing her neck as he pushes her hair out of the way to help her get her coat off. Later, she is certain, the surfaces of this moment will be painted with blush in her mind, but for now she cannot quite process their closeness, the feel of his hand on her neck. "I have to deal with this, but let me grab you some dry clothes to wear. I've got a guest room you can stay in," he adds, turning away from her. "Come upstairs and I'll grab some clothes for you and show you where you can sleep."

This is happening—but her brain is too in shock to register, so she numbly follows him up the narrow stairs, the old steps creaking under their combined weight, Ghost slinking along beside her.

Who was that? Who was that? Who _was_ that?

She belatedly realizes, as they turn on the landing, that she is soaked—her coat was too short to protect her from the rain—and her hair is clinging to her skin. She can't stop seeing that figure every time she blinks. Why isn't Jon surprised, or scared? If it's not a stalker, then who is it? Her romantic brain casts immediately to Jane Eyre, to secret wives locked in attics, but she is certain it wasn't a woman—and Jon, while as temperamental and moody as Rochester, does not exactly seem like he would have the free time to manage a secret wife. 

(Still, it is sort of funny. At least, she knows she'll find it funny later.)

The upstairs has lower ceilings, and it's blue in the darkness. They flash past a bedroom—she is certain it is his—too quick for her to peer inside, and come to a stop at the end of the hall. Jon flicks on a light to reveal a small, plain bedroom with windows looking out onto the rolling hills in back. It's tiny, but tidy, too, with a plain white bedspread and a bedside table with a blue lamp. 

"Pretty room," she remarks as Jon pulls back from the wallswitch. Half in the warm bedroom light and half in the cool darkness of the hall, he turns back to her, and their eyes meet. 

"Thanks," he mutters, looking down. "I'll grab you some clothes, hold on."

He brushes past her and she hears his footfalls down the hall as he goes into his own bedroom. She stands in the center of the room, looking around. There's no closet, but a narrow wardrobe, and she can see a man's black sweatshirt, with perhaps the Direwolves logo, hanging from a hook inside. There's a book on the nightstand, an old paperback, and when she looks closer she sees it's a well-known modern philosopher. "Edd stayed here last," Jon says as he comes back, and she sets the book down again. "Tollett, I mean," he explains at the look on her face. "He reads a lot."

He hands her a bundle of clothing and she takes it mutely, not looking at it, because to look at it is to acknowledge that he is giving her his clothing; that she is going to sleep in his house, in his clothing. 

"Thanks," she says after swallowing. Jon shrugs. 

"It's fine. Look, I've got to handle—" he pauses, "—that," he says, a shadow passing over his face. 

"Sure. I'll just—I'll change." 

"Yeah, um, we can put your clothes in the dryer, later, when you're changed out of them," he says. He turns away from her, pausing in the doorway, and then shuts the door, leaving her with Edd Tollett's book, his clothing, and Ghost. 

She struggles out of her wet jeans and sweater. Her legs and arms are blotchy from the cold, covered in gooseflesh, and she hangs her wet clothes over a chair before turning to the clothes he offered. On top of a folded towel—he is considerate—is an old hoodie of his, dark grey, the color faded and the cotton soft. She unfolds it and is hit with a blast of his scent, the scent she finds so reassuring, mixed with laundry detergent. It seems alarmingly personal, to give her his old hoodie, for the same soft cotton to touch her skin that has touched his so many times.

He's talking to someone, and she can hear the rhythm of anger in his voice through these old walls, but she can't decipher the words, and suddenly, Sansa does not want to. 

(Oh, she wants to know; he is a mystery, after all; but she does not want to ask, to push, to force open the door.)

She pulls on the sweatshirt and sweatpants as the shaking subsides. In the little mirror hanging on the inside of the wardrobe, she recoils from her reflection: drowned-rat hair, running makeup. Thank god she brought her makeup bag—Sansa is too vain to be comfortable being seen like this. Everyone expects her to be pretty at all times; they do not know how much work it takes, that it is not effortless, and she does not want them to know it isn't, but now Jon Snow knows. He has seen her undone too many times now, by rain, by tears.

(If she's not pretty, then what is the point of her as a person? She's not the feisty one, she's not the sassy one, she's not the smart one, the sexy one, the sporty one. Her value has always been predicated upon how well-conditioned her hair is, how coordinated her outfit is. Wasn't that what Joffrey liked about her?)

(Isn't that the point of Manolo!Sansa—that she is an upgraded version of herself, still pretty and polished but, this time, in a way that is not so tied to a man's opinion of her? Is it empowering that this time she's pretty in the way she wants to be, or is it the same song, different verse?)

(Maybe Jon has revised his opinion on whether she is pretty. She tries not to think about it as she dries her hair off.)

Clad in his clothes and with her makeup marginally better, Sansa gathers her things and opens the bedroom door, listening, but she can't tell if he's still on the phone. Ghost follows her as she goes to the stairs and pauses, in shadow, on the landing. 

"...not acceptable," Jon is saying acidly. She is just able to glimpse his legs and shoes as he paces the entryway. The house is quiet enough that she can tell it's a woman on the other line, but she can't decipher what she's saying. "I'm done with this," Jon says. "Look, I called the police, alright?" 

There's a finality to his tone, and, not wanting him to hear her, Sansa pauses and sits on the stair, stroking Ghost's fur absently. "Yeah, I know," he says, softening. She hears him let out a breath. "Okay. Yeah." The woman on the line says something, and he scoffs in turn. "Whatever. Night." 

Jon hangs up and lets out another long breath, and goes to the bottom of the stairs. 

Their eyes meet again, and Sansa hugs her knees to her chest as Jon's grey eyes trace the lines of her body in his sweatshirt. 

The question hangs in the air between them. Not, _who was that,_ but _what will you do to me for this?_

Right now, she is the one with the control.

"I'm not going to write anything about this," she tells him. His brows arch. 

"No?"

"I think," she says, touching Ghost's head, "that this falls pretty far outside of the range of what is my business, or what would be ethical to write about, whatever it is." 

He sags with relief, and she realizes now just _how_ afraid he was of what she might do with this incident; she realizes, now, how fully personal this incident has been for him. He rubs his face with his hand, avoiding the bruise from her shoe, and she is struck by how tired he looks. 

"Thank you, Sansa," he says quietly. 

It is killing her, to not know what has happened, but she knows it would also kill her to ask him. She holds her breath as Jon suddenly climbs the stairs, and sits down heavily on the last two steps after the twist of the landing, so that he is effectively sitting behind her. She twists to face him as Ghost gets up expectantly, and Jon rubs at his neck. 

"I'm guessing this is an old problem?" she ventures, watching his face carefully for signs on how—and whether—to proceed. A muscle in his jaw leaps as he focuses on patting Ghost, who rests his chin on Jon's knee, and it takes him a moment to speak. 

"Look," he begins, his voice low, "remember when I said that everything changed when I got injured?"

"Of course." 

He continues patting Ghost, not looking at her. 

"It wasn't just the injury—it also coincided with a big thing in my personal life changing. It was—it was a bad time. I didn't know if my career was over, and then..." he shakes his head. "When I came back to hockey, I was different. I didn't—I didn't come back the same person." 

He is struggling to communicate something, she can feel it, so she says nothing, and makes a point of not looking at him, knowing he would rather not have a spotlight on him. "It felt like something in me had changed, for the worse. Like—like something had died. That sounds stupid—"

"—No, I understand," she promises quickly. "Believe me, I understand."

"Well, when you say you sense I'm mid-transformation, or whatever it was you said, the thing is, that's not true. I wish it were, Sansa, but I think the transformation already happened. And not for the better. I think that's happened, and it's done, and whatever it was that I used to have is not coming back." 

They sit in silence, Ghost between them, as Sansa weighs her words. She risks a look up at Jon, and he's still looking down, still closed off.

She is only glimpsing the edge of something much bigger within him, but she happens to recognize it as easily as if she were looking into a mirror. 

"You know, I thought that too, but it comes back." She shifts and leans against the wall, and Jon looks up. Their eyes meet again, and her cheeks grow warm. There it is again; he is February and she is blooming like March. She is not sure she can stand it. "When you least expect it, and maybe when you least want it, it comes back," she explains ruefully. "But I do understand the feeling."

"So how'd you deal with it?" 

"I bought shoes," she admits, and he glances up, pretty lips curving into a half-smile. 

"Shoes?"

"The ones I hit you in the face with," she says with a groan, covering her face, and she hears Jon laugh. "I bought them because they looked like they represented the woman I would become, at some point, when it did grow back. I just—I just sort of insisted that things would be better again, I don't know. It probably sounds silly—"

"—No," he says, shaking his head, but he's still grinning as he looks down, and she is struck by that smile. He is revealing himself to her. She is beginning to see glimpses of the man who cheered Loras on for his first goal, letting out a whoop as if it were his own goal, the man that Tormund risked his own career to stick up for, the man who is utterly loved by so many. 

"So! If you'd like to renew your sense of hope, you too can do so for a cool thousand dollars," she tells him wryly, because thinking of how beloved this man is is making a stone grow in her throat and she needs to rush past the emotion.

"Jesus. A _thousand_ dollars? For shoes?"

"Almost. And worth every single penny," she laughs, and he does too, touching the bruise and shaking his head. "They are the most expensive thing I own, after my car. I ate ramen for weeks and avoided using my heat and electricity, to pay for them. It was a stupid purchase but I don't regret them even a single bit."

"For that much money, they'd better hurt when you throw them, I guess," he observes, and then they are laughing together, sitting in the darkness. 

(She likes his laugh.)

Red and blue light flashes in the dark, painting the walls, and Jon gets to his feet with heavy movements. "They're here. I'll be right back." 

"I'll stay here," she promises, watching him walk down the stairs. He pulls on his windbreaker and goes outside again, but Ghost stays with her, and shifts to lie on top of her feet, quietly demanding love, though his eyes stay trained in the direction of the front door. 

In the darkness, painted cobalt and ruby, Sansa wonders what she is going to do, because her mind is made up now, and she is nothing if not quietly stubborn, silently fierce. 

She cannot write about Jon. 

No, that's not it. She could, if she chose to.

She _will not_ write about Jon. 

So what is she going to do instead? What if Petyr Baelish doesn't approve her article on Joffrey? What if the Vale folds? Her life is spinning out again, raking itself over rocks, and as usual it's her own willful choices that are to blame.

The door shuts again, and then Jon has returned, and the flashing lights are fading, and Sansa puts her problems out of her head. She watches Jon take off his coat again; she studies the exhaustion in the set of his shoulders. No wonder the people who love him are so protective of him; no wonder she ran into a hard wall when she tried to get Tormund to divulge more about Jon. 

"Do you want tea?" she calls down the steps, and Jon looks up at her. 

"What? Tea? I don't drink it," he admits. "I'm not even sure I have it, but we can check."

They put her jeans in his washer—his laundry area is just off his kitchen, and a stack of clothes, mostly hoodies and jeans, are folded neatly in a basket, and the space has an intimacy to it from which she knows she cannot return. He doesn't have tea, but, as he points out, he does have a fireplace, and they build a fire in his living room fireplace. The room is simply furnished, and cozy, with a worn grey sofa facing the hearth, and they sit on opposite ends of it. Ghost curls up by the fireplace with an air of 'oh my god, _finally_ ' that makes them both laugh as they watch him settle. 

The room is dark, turned flashing gold by the fire, and the rain lashes at the windows. For a long time, they sit in the quiet. His sweatshirt is soft against her bare skin, and she is conscious of it against the lace of her bra, the curve of her hip. "So you're not going to ask me to explain?" 

There's a little of his usual antagonism to his voice, and he's not looking at her. 

(He must be loved; he must be treated with gentleness, and if there is one thing she can do well—to her own detriment—it is to love, to treat gently.)

"Do you _want_ to explain?" 

"Yeah," he surprises her, "I do. But if I explain, then you'll know."

"That _is_ how that works," she laughs, and is rewarded by that secret grin as he looks down at his hands. 

"I don't want you to know," he says quietly.

She tries not to read into it. He is a private man, that's all. There was no emphasis on 'you' there.

"Does anyone know?" 

"Tormund knows pieces of it, and my media manager Samwell does," he counts off. "A few others. But it's not—it's not just my decision," he says, looking at her. They are not as far apart on this couch as they should be, with a look on his face like that. "It's not just about me. There are other things about it—I have to protect someone." He shakes his head. "I'm probably not making sense..."

"I won't share it, if that's what you're worried about."

"No, it's not that. I know you won't," he dismisses, "at least, now I know, anyway." 

She wants to ask what changed his mind, but she can't get the words out, so she looks at the fire, and he does too. The firelight flickers across his face as he slumps down and leans his head back, closing his eyes. His arms are folded across his chest, and she watches his chest rise and fall with a weighted, sleepy movement. 

"You must be exhausted. We should go to bed," she says, and he sits up slightly at her words. 

"Yeah, sure." 

Things are awkward again, and she's not sure why. Maybe her wording was too familiar, maybe it's just the nature of the situation. The fire's dying anyway, and Jon reassures her he'll check on it before leading her back up the stairs. "If you need more blankets or anything, they're in the closet here," Jon says, pausing before her door and pointing to a linen closet. 

"Thanks for letting me stay, and sorry to intrude," she says, compelled by the awkwardness hanging in the air.

If there were a light on, maybe it would feel less intimate, but they are standing in the dark and the quiet, and she is wearing his sweatshirt and it smells like his skin, and his gaze kisses her face, soft and tentative as the flutter of fingertips or eyelashes, and she realizes how close they are standing. She can see every freckle in his grey eyes, every eyelash, the detail of every scar. 

And he is studying her in turn, and she wonders which details he is noticing, and if they are good ones or bad ones. 

"You're not intruding," he says quietly, and he bites his lip. 

(Why is she recalling, now, the way he promised her that he thought about women?)

He casts his gaze down, and she realizes he is noticing his sweatshirt on her; noticing how it sits on her shoulders and how the sleeves bunch at her wrists. When he looks up again, his eyes are nearly black, and she cannot help but draw in a sharp breath that they both perceive. "You've got—hold on," he breathes, and he reaches up and presses his thumb to her cheek, just below her eye, and—it is like he is the sun and she is blooming toward him—she lifts her gaze and he steps closer, and in a strange and lovely mirror to the night they met, he is moving his thumb across her cheek, and this time she closes her eyes and feels his forehead brush hers—

—and then he's pulling back, letting out a hot breath that fans across her collarbone, exposed by the neckline of his sweatshirt, and she is cast in shadow again. 

"What—"

He shakes his head and turns from her. 

"You said it yourself," he mutters, raking a hand over his hair, "I'm the one in control here, and I can't forget that." He pauses at his door, draws in a deep breath, still not looking at her. "I'm sorry. Good night." 

He shuts the door and abandons her in the hall. Sansa goes into the spare bedroom, where Ghost is curled at the foot of the bed, and she stands in the middle of the room.

(He is wrong; she knows he is mid-transformation, though he does not sense it. And she knows that in February, things must be loved.)

She steels her will. She will not write about this man; she will protect him, instead. 

She leaves the spare bedroom, and knocks on his door. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the most self-indulgent thing i have ever written. bon appetit.

"Jon?" 

The floor creaks, and she fists her hands as the door opens. Jon, in a white tee and pajama shorts, opens the door partway. Behind him, she can see the covers are pulled back from his bed, the pillows disarranged. He regards her with that look that made her draw in a sharp breath earlier—the one that reminds her that for all of his gentleness and care, he is still a man who thinks about women. 

"Sansa," he begins quietly, "it's not a good idea." 

She swallows, and watches his eyes flick over her throat, noting the movement. 

"I didn't come here for sex." 

His eyes widen briefly at the frank wording; he breathes through his nose, bites his lower lip. She is aware of it all. 

"Maybe not," he hedges, after a moment's thought, "but that's what will happen, and—"

"—No, it won't." 

The only other time that she has been faced with the prospect of sex since before the divorce—the actual prospect, worthy of her consideration—was at Renly's party, when she briefly considered a one-night stand with Tormund Giantsbane. But that had been nothing more than an idle consideration, fueled by stress and alcohol and an unfamiliar man's unexpected charisma. This would be a different kind of sex, fueled by something else, and this kind of sex—well, she has never actually been faced with the prospect. What a damning realization, that for all of her scars and her longing, there is such a vast part of life she has not experienced. 

As with everything tonight, as with everything Jon Snow, it is unbearably personal—entirely from the neck up, despite how she feels about his body. She is trying not to picture it, and must admit she has been trying not to picture it since the party. And he knows it, obviously. She has apparently not been subtle with anyone except herself. "Besides, you're not in a place for it," she adds desperately.

Jon scoffs in disbelief. 

" _I'm_ not in a place for it? Sansa, are you serious?" He looks offended, and either on purpose or not, he opens the door a little wider. She crosses her arms over her chest, watches him notice and pull his gaze away. 

"Completely serious," she informs him. "It would be taking advantage of you. You're not in a good place tonight." 

"What?" he looks baffled. "I'm a professional athlete whose team won today; I scored a backhand goal they'll be talking about for a week, do you really think you could take adv—"

"—Congratulations," she presses on sarcastically, unsteady in her direction but no less sure of it, and he gives her that skeptical, slightly furious look, the one she is beginning to recognize—the one that precedes his urge to play, to fight, to duel. "You had a good game today. You also had your privacy invaded—by me, and by whoever was on your property tonight."

"You said I'm the one in control," he points out.

"You are, and I won't take it away from you. I'm not trying to sleep with you," she protests.

"You're only here because of my public identity. It wouldn't be strange for you to feel pressured, especially after I—"

(And there it is. He is responsible, at all times. He is always conscious of what is expected of him, of how he must conduct himself. Even in his own home, even behind closed doors.)

"—I'm here because I care about you," she interrupts, and he is taken aback. "I'm fascinated by you, and I care about you, and I am not afraid of you, even if you want me to be."

"That's ridiculous—" She can see hints of the temper he displays on the ice, but if she allows this to turn into a true face-off again, she can't guarantee she will win this one. She steps forward, pressing on the door, and the movement stops him mid-speech.

(What would it mean to lose this face-off?)

"Let me in." She leans on the door, and he braces it defiantly, stopping it from opening further. "Let me stay with you tonight."

He gives her hand on his door an assessing look. "If it would be less awkward, I can sleep on the floor. But you went through something tonight, and I don't think anyone else is taking care of you. I can't just leave you by yourself."

He bristles like he's gearing up for a counterstrike, but she presses again on the door, and he steps back abruptly, unbalancing her. The door swings open, revealing his bedroom to her in full, the draft of the movement ruffling her hair. 

"Why is it your responsibility?" he asks, as she regains her balance.

"It's not," she admits. 

"Are you going to put this in your article?" he wonders, looking demonstratively around his room before returning his arch gaze to her, but she shakes her head. 

"You already know you'll get full control over what I publish," she says, though of course, she has no intention of publishing a single word on Jon Snow.

(What is she going to do?)

(It doesn't matter. He cannot fix her life, and he owes her nothing.)

(It's not important right now, but he is.)

They stare at each other. He is making his decision, and she holds her breath as she waits for the sword to drop. But then his expression softens, because Ghost has come into the room, padding softly toward the bed, and Jon lets out a breath. 

"Alright, then," he says, and he turns from her as Ghost lingers expectantly by the edge of the bed. 

They stand on either side of the bed—his sheets are plain white, the bed bookended by plain nightstands. One of his windows is open, letting in the chill and the sound of the rain, and she does not suggest that he close it. They stare at each other, daring the other to make the first move. The way he looks in that worn tee shirt—taut over the arms, shoulders and chest, loose at the abdomen—is not helping matters.

(It's another face-off.) 

She bites her lip as Jon pulls the covers back on his side and gets in with wary, slow movements, and as he turns away, she slips in between the sheets—hastily, like a thief. The sound of skin against sheets is such an intimate, private sound. Her limbs feel clumsy and her tongue feels thick, as though she is drunk. The mattress sinks with their weight, and her elbow brushes his back. 

Ghost silently leaps onto the bed, landing between them at the foot, and now it's just their matched breathing and the sound of the rain.

Lying on her back, Jon's back is in her peripheral vision—the way the faint light from the night panels him in silver, the way his shirt twists along his skin, the way lean muscle moves beneath the soft, worn cotton as he shifts his position. "Are you, um, warm enough and all?"

His voice is so soft, and she knows the thought of this will be painful later. 

"Yes, thank you." 

She knows by the rhythm of his breathing and the tension in the air that he is not asleep yet. She turns onto her side, facing away from him. 

Eventually, they relax. Calm settles over her, and sleep approaches. His sheets smell like him, and they're soft, and the rain is soothing, and... 

"So who slept in your room?" he asks, sometime later, as her eyelids are at last growing heavy with sleep and she is sinking more deeply into his pillow, sinking into his scent, lost in the sound of the rain, weighed beneath everything that has happened tonight.

"Hm?" she prompts drowsily, sleepy mind trying to parse his meaning. 

"When you divorced Baratheon," he explains, his voice rough with impending sleep. "Who slept in your bedroom with you like this?"

She cannot tell if his tone is curious, accusatory, angry, detached... jealous.

"No one," she yawns. "But it was my choice, I guess."

She hears him roll over. He must be facing her back now, just an arm's length away.

"Alright," he says, and she is too close to being claimed by sleep to ask him why he sounds like _that_ about it. 

* * *

She wakes in the small hours of the morning to find they are facing each other. Jon's face is pressed into the pillows; he is sleeping with abandon, one hand resting on the sheets between them. The room is lavender, hinting at dawn, and the rain has stopped. Ghost's head rests on her ankles, his back pressed up against Jon's shins. 

Jon stirs. With the way they are pressed into the pillows, only one of his eyes is visible, and only one of hers is. 

"Thinking?" he guesses, his voice rough and low. Their hands are an inch apart on the sheets.

"Yeah," she whispers. 

"Knew you would be," he says, closing his eyes and settling into his pillow. "You can't come back from something like this. Knew you didn't know." 

How has he guessed her thoughts so precisely? He is, as ever, a blade—and she feels cut open, and she is tired of being a mirror, because Jon Snow does not want to see his reflection in her like the rest of the world does; he wants to crack her shards and see what is behind them.

His violent observations are precise; he recklessly broke her surface that first night he touched her, uninterested in his reflection and too clear-eyed not to see there was someone on the other side of the glass, and hairline cracks have been forming since, little shards of glass dropping away from her. 

"Then why did you let it happen? Why did you let me in?" she demands in a whisper. 

His visible eye opens again, soft grey with soft lashes, and he looks at her thoughtfully. He has a freckle on his wrist, just above the bone, an inconvenient thing to notice right now. 

"I guess," he says quietly, "I figured we weren't going back anyway. One way or the other."

She wants to ask, _so which is it?_ Which way are they going? But that would mean admitting that she has no plans to write about him; and that would mean admitting another truth, one more problematic and complicated. 

It would also be a risk, for there is no guarantee of what he might say. The figure flashing in her headlights, the phone calls from that woman—she is not the only one who has complicated, problematic truths to overcome. And unlike her, he might not _want_ to overcome those things. 

He lifts his head to check his watch on his other wrist, and the movement pushes his hand against hers, skin brushing against skin, and they do not move their hands right away. "It's really early," he says, dropping onto the pillows again. "Go back to sleep."

They settle in again, and she pulls her hand away, because it is polite, and closes her eyes. She feels Jon's calloused hand settle over hers. It promises nothing, but, of course, it's another step in some direction—some direction that is new, some direction past a gate that is now closed. 

_We were going there anyway,_ she thinks drowsily. She just doesn't know what 'there' means yet.

* * *

"It starts fine," Sansa calls out the rolled-down window. She turns off the Mini again, and moves to get out of the car, but Jon, hands shoved in the pockets of his windbreaker, just comes to her door. 

It's a grey morning, the world torn up by the freezing rain, though the ice has all melted and now the countryside is all browns and greys. Earlier, Jon did his best to look underneath the Mini, but didn't see any obvious damage. 

"Sounds fine," he agrees, listening to the engine. "Here, I'll direct you to the drive so you don't drive over rock again."

She swerves around the rocky area and pulls back onto the driveway, her tires much happier for it, and parks the car again. 

It's time to leave. They have delayed it enough—wordlessly, subtly. They both pretended to sleep late; she took a long shower and Jon put her jeans on the longest dryer cycle, she saw him do it; they had coffee together, though they didn't talk much. They had toast together and he showed her the garden in the back, which used to be a kitchen garden when the house was first built.

Now they are out of excuses that do not need to be said. 

"Well, I guess it's safe to drive," she says as Jon stands beside her door again. 

"Yeah, seems like it." He looks down. "When are you going to send me the article for approval? I'm guessing it's urgent?"

He would remember, of course, that she told him the Vale was in dire straits. Sansa swallows and looks ahead. 

"Probably in a day or two," she lies. He is so observant and so clever; can he see through this lie? Can he sense it? "And, um, I'll give you a couple days to read through it and send back any edits or corrections."

"Alright." He's looking away, the wind toying with his messy hair. He looks like he might say more—biting his lip like that—and she waits. "Well, I'll text you my email address. I should probably have my media manager, Sam, read it, too," he adds guiltily. "Dunno why I didn't think of it before."

"Oh, of course. Good point," she says, but it's all bullshit. "Anyway."

"Anyway," Jon mirrors, and for a moment she thinks he's making fun of her, revealing something about her tone. "Drive safe." 

"Thanks, you too—wait, no, you're not driving," she stammers, and he does _that_ laugh again, and then she's smiling, and—dammit. "See you."

"Yeah. See you." 

She pulls away and doesn't put the window up. In her rearview mirror she can see Jon standing there, hands in his pockets, watching her go; and then she rounds a bend and he is gone. 

The drive back is quiet, uneventful. She is trapped in dark water beneath thick ice; she does not know what she is going to do, and she does not know how to begin thinking about it, not when everything else is so utterly, profoundly in bloom. It's when the flowers show up that you're grateful for time passing, she notes; time moving forward is not always a thing to dread.

She's just in time for the brunch rush in the city, but it's such a cold, wet morning that the rush is dampened, and before she knows it she's back in her studio apartment, feeling like it has been filled with flowers, though it is empty and dark as ever. 

She checks her phone and email: there are a few memes from Bran and Rickon, a video of Robb and his wife's son eating an olive for the first time; a few mindless work emails—and then—

_Dear Sansa,_

_I have read your draft on Joffrey Baratheon and would like to set up a meeting to discuss. I am available this Tuesday, morning preferred—please advise on your schedule._

_Regards,_

_Petyr Baelish_

* * *

_Direwolves Whatsapp Group Chat, Monday Evening_

_~Samwell Tarly 7:36pm:_ Good evening! Can anyone explain to me the impetus behind today's so-called 'Guyliner' incident? It's just that it is all over Twitter, trending as 'Linergate,' and I am getting quite a lot of questions about it. 

_~Samwell Tarly 7:36pm_ : You all looked lovely, by the way. 

_~Samwell Tarly 7:37pm:_ However, I must release a statement, and I am... not quite sure what to say about this one! 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:37pm:_ yeah it was grenn's fault 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:38pm_ : brb i guess i'm back to laughing hysterically about this, gotta pee 

_~Grenn Aurochs 7:39pm:_ i hat u pyp

 _~Pypar Mummer 7:39pm:_ you HAT me, what did i ever do to deserve this? dont beanie like that, i fedora you

 _~Edd Tollett 7:40pm:_ ugh.

 _~Loras Tyrell 7:40pm:_ i am not sure where to start with this one but i think it had something to do w eye cream and the puck?

 _~Loras Tyrell 7:40pm:_ idk i just kinda went with it

 _~Samwell Tarly 7:41pm:_ Thank you, everyone, for the detail! However, this has not actually provided me with insight that will help me release a statement! 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:42pm:_ so grenn took his gf's eye thingy, the pen thing, thought it was eye cream, smeared it around his eyes to help him see better 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:43pm:_ and then we couldn't get it off his face, so then i put it on too so he wouldn't look like the only goth or whatever during practice

 _~Pypar Mummer 7:43pm:_ then tollett did too, because he actually is goth 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:43pm_ : and then giantsbane did, and he actually looked the best in it, which i feel weird saying? it was a look, as my gf would say

 _~Pypar Mummer 7:44pm:_ then tyrell did, but he looked basically the same, which is vindicating 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:45pm:_ and then snow had to because we all were doing it - btw he asked us very coldly to 'never do this again' so p sure he is MAD 

_~Pypar Mummer 7:45pm:_ hard to tell tho, he was in a good mood today otherwise, kinda smiley, always unsettles me 

_~Loras Tyrell 7:46pm:_ agreed, must be all the banks he's robbed lately 

_~Loras Tyrell 7:47pm:_ and the new tattoos [skull emoji]

 _~Samwell Tarly 7:47pm:_ Sorry, which tattoos are these? Which banks?

 _~Edd Tollett 7:48pm:_ i truly do not know why you thought asking us would get you answers, Tarly.

 _~Pypar Mummer 7:49pm:_ why is your first question WHICH banks???

 _~Pypar Mummer 7:49pm:_ do you already have a contingency plan for when, not IF, snow robs a bank?

 _~Samwell Tarly 7:50pm:_ If I assume the worst, then it cannot surprise me!

 _~Ygritte Wild 7:51pm:_ this poor son of a bitch has whole binders on the dumb shit you assholes might pull

 _~Ygritte Wild 7:51pm:_ there's a volume just on grenn's facial hair

 _~Ygritte Wild 7:51pm:_ thank fuck i just have to worry about your skates and sticks... and even then

 _~Edd Tollett 7:51pm:_ and what did we learn from this incident today? 

_~Loras Tyrell 7:51pm:_ nothing tbh 

_~Loras Tyrell 7:52pm:_ except that i think renly might cheat on me with giantsbane at some point now

* * *

 **Myranda** [8:15pm]: hey girl OMG did you see the pics from today's direwolves practice???

 **Sansa** [8:16pm]: Hi, Myranda. Just looking now!

 **Myranda** [8:16pm]: omg LOOK at them, the guys all wore guyliner for some reason??? it has watered my crops and cleared my skin and i think we might get world peace too 

**Myranda** [8:16pm]: the official dw twitter is saying it was 'team solidarity' which DOES NOT EXPLAIN but who am i to look a gift horse in the mouth? 

**Myranda** [8:16pm]: giantsbane looks like the sexy, metal ginger viking of all my fantasies, am saving that image and maybe getting it framed? too much?

 **Myranda** [8:17pm]: also you know who can kinda get it? pypar mummer. he always looks like a cute monkey to me with those ears but now i'm getting like sexy punk rock monkey vibes and .. into it??? like if tormund is the goth viking who will ravish me, pypar mummer is the adorable con artist on the pirate ship, maybe has an earring, can swindle me out of my corset? and i always found edd tollett kinda sexy in a dark way, he is clearly vibing with the guyliner

 **Sansa** [8:17pm]: This is pretty specific, even for you!

 **Myranda** [8:17pm]: loras tyrell actually doesn't look much different, tbh, but JON SNOW oh my god, best for last

 **Myranda** [8:18pm]: just gonna let you find pics of him yourself, like holy shit, what a man 

**Myranda** [8:18pm]: i already go feral victorian when he flashes some ankle or shows up to post-game briefings in his underarmor 

**Myranda** [8:19pm]: shall i come over with smelling salts? 

**Myranda** [8:20pm]: sans?


	11. Chapter 11

Sansa paces back and forth in the hallway before the conference room, her Manolos making a hushed rustle along the carpet. 

Petyr Baelish rarely comes to the Vale, as he is typically busier with the more important outlets of their media conglomerate. As a result, their little outlet often feels like a forgotten child at a party, slinking around the legs of important and loud adults. They rarely post anything worth his attention, so he doesn't even have an office at the Vale. Instead, on the rare occasion that his presence is required, he takes up the only conference room that has walls (the others have glass) for a day, and nervous women with immaculate blow-outs and hushed voices bring him coffee and glare at the Vale employees. Sansa has only met him a few times: her general impression is of a short, stylish man, swathed in tailoring and trailing a mix of unusual cologne and mint wherever he goes. Myranda seems wary of him while also desperate for his attention, and interactions with him are one of the rare times that Myranda seems unsettled or lacking in confidence. 

As such, Sansa is nervous as hell. 

After all, if a man can unseat Myranda, what can he do to Sansa? Even if this weren't an incredibly personal matter, Sansa would be panicking. Petyr Baelish is such an utterly connected man—if she wants to stay within this media conglomerate, or ever evolve her career in this field, his impression of her is everything. 

So she wore her only pencil skirt—earning raised brows from Myranda this morning—and her Manolos, which are just plain enough to work in this 'creative' environment but still interesting enough to give her the punch of confidence she needs. She spent ages on her hair. She made color-coded lists, and practiced acceptable reactions in the mirror. She lay in her bed last night, anxiously running through all the possible ways that this meeting might go. Now she's over-caffeinated and over-rehearsed, and the anxiety of knowing how much rides on this article is not helping.

And then the conference room door opens with a click.

"Ms. Stark?" 

"Yes!" She turns on her heel so quickly that she feels dizzy. 

Petyr Baelish is smiling at her from the open door. His grey suit and pistachio-colored silk tie bring out his remarkable green eyes, which rove over her appearance like he's taking inventory. 

"I'm ready to speak now," he says, stepping back and gesturing for her to enter. 

The conference room has a wall of windows which look out onto a busy road in King's Landing, and the roar of traffic is just audible. Today is grey but bright, giving the room a harsh gloom. Petyr has set up shop at one end of the gleaming dark cherry conference table, where a fine leather briefcase, an expensive laptop, and several files sit. The room smells strongly of cologne, mint, and espresso. "Sit, sit," he urges, pointing to a leather chair adjacent to his. Her piece on Joffrey is printed out and neatly stacked on the table, atop a fine leather folder. "How are you, Sansa? It's been a while," he says, sliding into his own chair and slipping on a pair of elegant glasses. 

It's almost amusing, because they have barely spoken—she is not sure he could otherwise pick her out of a line of women—yet he makes it sound like they are old colleagues. 

"Great, thank you. And you?" 

"Oh, managing," he says slyly, arranging his pen and notebook. "Thank you for taking time out of your day to speak with me. Myranda tells me you are chipping away at _quite_ the piece on the Direwolves' captain, Jon Snow." 

Her belly clenches, and Sansa resists the urge to fidget with her pen. Petyr's brows flick up at the twitch of her hands, and she notices that he picks up his own pen as well, though he does not fidget with it. "That would be quite the 'get' for the Vale; he's a known mystery, and there are some fascinating rumors swirling about him," Petyr continues when she simply smiles. "An A-lister, to be sure, and such an interesting character. No social media, no public relationship, no family, and a near-blanket policy against media..." 

"He is quite the man," she agrees, trying not to visibly bristle at the way he is talking about Jon.

She sets her pen down experimentally—mirroring is an old technique; is he really...? He sets the pen down too, just like she guessed. "I thought you wanted to speak about my article on Joffrey Baratheon?"

Petyr's lips twitch. 

"The two are related." He sets a hand on top of her article. Between his fingers, notes are scrawled in the margins, in mulberry-colored ink. "This is a beautifully-written exposé, Sansa." 

She does not miss the use of her first name. She folds her hands and smiles. "Myranda never told me how talented you were. The portrait you paint of Joffrey Baratheon is nuanced, striking—empathetic, yet just. You have revealed him." 

"Thank you. I had an unfair advantage," she hedges, but Petyr laughs softly. 

"After his mistreatment of you," he begins gently, "I would imagine you would be at the greatest disadvantage to be able to write a piece like this."

His tone is sympathetic, his words are kind—and yet something about him makes her skin crawl. "However, he is of the Lannister-Baratheon empire," Petyr continues, now dispassionate, "and there is so much investigation and fact-checking that must be done before we can publish a piece like this. We must tread so cautiously here." 

"Of course, of course I understand that." 

(Fact-checking is a part of the process—though not typically necessary at the Vale—but something about it still stings. It is nothing personal, but she still feels like she is being called a liar. There is no way to fact-check most of what she has written; it is based on her own experiences.)

(In that way, this is not truly journalism; and her piece is not an exposé as she has framed it, so much as a memoir.)

"Such a process, if done properly, can take months." He smiles at her, eyes crinkling at the corners. "And I'm afraid the Vale doesn't have the luxury of months... or even weeks." 

Her stomach drops; she briefly sees black spots winking in her vision. _No no no no._ We always believe we have mastery over our own lives; what a silly illusion. "The company's plan has been, for months now, to end the Vale's tenure, lay off its employees, and use its old content for parts on other outlets. I had planned on keeping Myranda on and transferring her to one of our more serious outlets, but she is bronze to your platinum, based on what I've seen here."

Sansa opens her mouth but no planned words come out—and then there is a knock on the door, and before Petyr can say anything, Myranda is poking her head in. Her curly brown hair is glossier than usual, her eyeliner heavier, her blouse tighter, and something clicks into place in Sansa's mind that she had not understood before. Revulsion for Petyr Baelish, powerful and acidic, courses through her.

"Hel-lo! Just checking in to see if you two needed any input from me," she says with a little wink. Petyr's smile remains fixed, and Myranda's small mouth, bearing a harsh, berry-colored lipstick, quivers. 

(She must have known Petyr's plans—not only the layoff but also the possibility of her own tenure being preserved.)

"No input necessary, Myranda, but thank you," Petyr says coolly, and Sansa can see Myranda recalibrating, recalculating. 

"Sansa is writing an absolutely killer piece on Jon Snow, by the way," she informs Petyr, making the 'perfect' sign with her thumb and forefinger. "You know—man of mystery, object of lust, bane of goalies?"

"Yes, you have mentioned it. Thank you, Myranda," he dismisses. 

Myranda swallows and ducks out, humiliated, leaving them in silence again.

For a long moment they sit there, listening to the distant rumble of city traffic and the murmur of the office beyond them. Sansa stares at the grain of the wooden conference table. 

(Not for the first time, she is struck by the disparity in power between her and Jon. She imagines him at a similar conference table, elsewhere in King's Landing, in an immaculate suit, negotiating privacy from the media in the locker room for his team, staring down his opponents with that steely look.)

(She has no such power.)

(Oh, people say there's no such thing as hierarchy; and how many self-help books peddle the promise that power is within your reach, so long as you stretch out your hand and just take it? But Sansa knows that power is not so easily grasped—and it often simply costs too much.)

Petyr takes off his glasses and sets them on top of her article, then steeples his hands as he clears his throat. "So? What do you think?"

(She has only ever wanted security; but among the many things that Jon has revived within her, her integrity is one of them.)

(She will not sacrifice Jon's privacy—the thing he wants most—for her own security.)

"I—I'm not writing about Jon Snow." 

Sansa forces herself to meet Petyr's eyes, even though her own are starting to grow wet. She doesn't know if it's anger or grief or fear this time. "I planned an article—"

"—Yes, and you met him in the locker room after his game, and went to his house on Saturday," Petyr cuts in. He smiles fondly at her shock. "You think you are the only journalist investigating Jon Snow? You are not even the only journalist in our conglomerate, Sansa."

And then he leans forward. "But you could be, if you wanted." 

His voice is barely a whisper. Mint wafts across her face and Sansa resists the urge to lean back. She might throw up, her stomach is roiling, and every instinct is demanding that she smile sweetly, thank him for the opportunity, and take this chance to save her future. 

All of her shame at where she is in her life—her bank account, her studio apartment, her cabinet full of ramen noodles, her resume that tells you she was a kept woman for a startlingly long time—bubbles to the surface. She could write about Jon; she could take Myranda's job and work for this scheming, stylish man. She wouldn't even have to do it for long; just long enough to find a newer, better job; just long enough to shore herself up financially; just long enough to... 

But in the end it isn't even a decision, not really. She has made her mind up, so many little times, over the last few weeks—when she saw the look on Jon's face at Renly's party when Margaery lied about who she was; when Jon dressed her down for invading his privacy, and that of his teammates, in the locker room; when she pressed on his bedroom door; when he covered her hand with his in the middle of the night. 

"No, thank you."

Her words ring out in the silence of the conference room, and she rises. There's nothing more to say. Petyr stands with her, elegantly adjusting his suit jacket, his eyes narrowed as he tries to calculate where this situation is going and how he might react. "I was actually planning on quitting," she says, and as she speaks she realizes the truth behind the words.

Something was growing beneath soil all this time; it is only just now becoming a green shoot, forcing its way through earth. 

"You realize that the Joffrey Baratheon piece is our intellectual property now," he says, unflinching and cool as ever. "Your work belongs to us now."

(Some part of her thought he might put up a _little_ more of a fight than that.)

"Thank you for your time," she says stiffly, and she turns and strides out of the room. 

There are alarm bells going off in her head; the people-pleaser in her, the perennial good girl, is shrieking at her to turn back and beg forgiveness, beg for a job, beg for her security. It takes her a moment to realize she is making a bee-line for Myranda's office, and she almost opens the door without knocking—then decides, at the last moment, to knock. 

"Come in," Myranda calls, and Sansa enters. 

Myranda is standing by the window, as Sansa imagines she must have been for the entire duration of her meeting with Petyr. There is a greasy pallor to her, an avoidance in her gaze, that tells Sansa everything she needs to know. "Hey, girl! How did it go?" she asks. Her voice rings falsely cheerful. "What'd he think?"

"He tried to offer me your job," Sansa informs her plainly, and Myranda blanches. "Don't worry, I didn't take it, though I don't think you should, either. He seems like a predator and you don't seem happy." 

Myranda's mouth quivers again, and Sansa forces onward. "I'm not writing the Jon Snow article, you should know. And I'm quitting. Unfortunately, I can't give two weeks' notice—"

"—Y-you're fired, then," Myranda stammers. "What the _fuck_ , Sansa? I was going to try and convince him to keep you on through the layoffs—"

"—You don't have to," Sansa says calmly. "Seriously. This isn't the right job for me, and trying to keep me on would only delay the inevitable."

"Is that why you didn't respond to my texts last night? You were planning on just, like, fucking off today?" she asks sarcastically, her voice thick, and Sansa realizes again just how much stress Myranda has clearly been under, playing the merry fool and sinking all the while.

"No. I didn't respond because they made me a little uncomfortable, actually," she says, and again is surprised at her own ability to tell the truth. 

To her credit, Myranda looks horrified.

"Oh my god, I didn't mean—"

"—It's okay, seriously. I promise. It's not your fault... I never told you it made me uncomfortable. I didn't even realize it until last night." 

There is a moment where they regard each other in pained silence. Sansa knows she is still in shock; the full impact of what she has done has not quite sunk in yet, but she is genuinely sorry to lose Myranda, even if their relationship was uneven and, at times, deeply unprofessional. Myranda's eyes are wet and her heavy eyeliner is in danger. Sansa swallows and turns away. Her hands are beginning to shake. "Um, I'll go collect my things."

Myranda says nothing to stop her, so Sansa turns the handle and leaves Myranda's office. 

* * *

It is not until she gets back to her apartment that Sansa finally lets herself break down. 

Standing in her Manolos in her dark apartment, she drops her bag on the floor—lighter without her work laptop—and covers her face and then the tears come, hot and slow but steady, her shoulders shaking silently. She is not sure if she is grieving for her choices or grieving for how long she took to make them. Past or future? She does not know, but what she does know is that this was inevitable, a long time in the making, and the inevitability of it is somehow the most painful part. 

( _You need a new direction, Sansa._ Even Renly—a shallow man who barely knows her—could spot it in one.)

There is so much to do now and it overwhelms her. Her phone is pinging with texts from her family, innocent little daily texts, so she turns the phone screen-down and puts it on silent mode. She is not ready to tell anyone about this just yet.

She stands in her shower and lets the grief run over as she processes all that her life now is: she is jobless, at rock bottom once again, and now to top it off, she has given away her story on Joffrey. Years of pain, anger, and loneliness—all sacrificed, and for what? 

(Where is the Sansa who knows that something wonderful is around the next turn? Where is the Sansa who bought the Manolos? At the moment it feels like she is gone.)

Tomorrow, she will begin the dreaded job search. Tomorrow, she will try to figure out how she is going to make ends meet. For now... she is going to binge Real Housewives of King's Landing, drink Jonquil wine (it costs about the same, per bottle, as a cup of coffee from Kraken's), and trawl the internet. 

The Direwolves are playing the Khals tonight, and as darkness settles in her apartment, Sansa turns on the game. Her heart twists at the sight of Jon in his jersey, and she takes a long gulp of wine. She just doesn't know enough about hockey to process the game, so she takes to Twitter, watching Tweets about Jon go by—little comments on the change in his energy, on the way he looks exhilarated as Tormund scores the first goal of the game, on the brightness of his movements. She wonders if whatever was going on in his private life has somehow resolved, and that's why he seems so ...bright. 

And that's when, to her surprise, a new DM pops up. She only had a Twitter account to contact Renly, after all—it's probably spam.

 **the_blind_septon** : puppy!

 **the_blind_septon** : have an opportunity for u coming up to spend time with snow... brienne suggested it but i think she just wants to hang out with u again 

**the_blind_septon** : but it's actually like a rly good idea 

Sansa stares at Renly's DMs for a moment. She thinks of her phone, largely ignored, full of messages from people who know her and love her—people who cannot objectively advise her. And she thinks of just how insightful that conversation over coffee was with Renly, that day in the Kraken's. 

**SansaSnark87:** Hi Renly!

 **SansaSnark87:** Good to hear from you - I actually wanted to get in touch with you anyway and was wondering if you'd like to get coffee in the next week or so. I know it sounds a little weird, but I would love your guidance on something.

 **the_blind_septon** : omg i love giving advice, yes of course!!!

 **SansaSnark87:** Great, thank you so much! I'm actually available during the workdays now, so any time you are free would work for me.

 **the_blind_septon** : UM

 **the_blind_septon** : puppy WHY are u free during the workday?!

 **the_blind_septon** : u know what, don't explain 

**the_blind_septon:** lets meet on thurs at 10 for coffee and u can come with me afterward to see loras and the boys practice!

 **the_blind_septon:** gonna take a wild guess that u will need cheering up... and personally watching sweaty men ram into each other always cheers me up 

**the_blind_septon** : o and here's my number, i'm going on a twitter diet for a few days so txt me there instead <3 

Sansa closes her laptop, making a mental note to get Renly to stop calling her 'Puppy.' Even though her heart leapt at the opportunity to spend more time with Jon, she is going to have to explain to Renly, in person, that it is now unnecessary.

Still, somehow the world seems brighter, and she feels brave enough to check her phone. 

Among the dozens of texts and emails—none from Myranda—there is one text from Jon Snow. He must have sent it, she realizes, prior to his game starting.

 **Jon Snow [4:32pm]:** hi, Sansa. here is my email that you can send the article to. apologies for not sending sooner. 

It is his personal account, rather than one affiliated with the Direwolves. Either he took this many days to send it because he does not care, or... 

**Sansa [8:36pm]:** Thank you so much!

She types and deletes, types and deletes. Her only solace is that he is literally playing hockey at this very second—he just stole the puck from an impossibly broad man she is informed by Twitter is Drogo Bharbo, center for the Khals—so he cannot see her struggle. 

She types out the words a dozen times and deletes them again. _I'm actually not writing the article anymore._ Or, _thank you so much for everything, but I actually quit my job._ Or, _when I left your house on Sunday it was an ugly day but the world has never looked more beautiful or more promising to me._

In the end, though, she gives up. This is not a text message discussion. He gave too much of himself to her for this—he deserves an explanation, face-to-face. She will tell him when she sees him on Thursday. 

(But she can still send another text. As a treat.)

 **Sansa [8:45pm]:** By the way, nice game tonight. 

A few hours later, she is finally getting ready for bed, having done her best with cold spoons and frozen teabags to prevent her eyes from being puffy from today's grief. She plugs her phone into its charger on her nightstand, turns out the light, and just as she is getting comfortable, her phone pings with a new text message. 

**Jon Snow [11:14pm]:** you watched?

 **Sansa [11:15pm]:** Yes, though I admit I had to rely on Twitter for help following along. 

Her thumbs hover over the screen as she bites her lip, trying to think of how she can prolong their interaction, even if only for a few minutes. In a few days she will sever this connection, too, even though it doesn't feel like pruning what is no longer good for her so much as cutting away a bud about to burst into bloom. 

**Jon Snow [11:15pm]:** you just need to come to more games. you'll pick it up. 

Even if she digs her teeth into her lip, she can't stop the grin from forming, and part of her marvels at the fact that she can still smile after all that has happened today. 

**Sansa [11:15pm]** : Good point, I *did* need somewhere to wear my new Giantsbane jersey... 

**Jon Snow [11:15pm]** : what 

* * *

_Pypar Mummer has created the group WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!_

_Pypar Mummer has added Grenn Aurochs, Tormund Giantsbane, Ygritte Wilde, Edd Tollett, Samwell Tarly, and Loras Tyrell_

_Pypar Mummer 11:14pm_ : WHY IS HE SMILING LIKE THAT 

_Pypar Mummer 11:14pm_ : WHO IS HE TEXTING 

_Ygritte Wilde 11:14pm:_ idk i'm trying to see around his seat but tormunds hairs in the way

 _Samwell Tarly 11:15pm:_ The plane is going to take off soon, everyone - we shouldn't be texting! 

_Ygritte Wilde 11:15pm:_ if you have nothing helpful to add then stfu 

_Loras Tyrell 11:15pm:_ he just laughed and tried to hide it WHAT IS HAPPENING

 _Edd Tollett 11:15pm:_ i swear to god tyrell if you use that stupid--

 _Loras Tyrell 11:15pm_ : flaming_elmo.gif 

_Edd Tollett 11:16pm_ : and there it is.

 _Edd Tollett 11:16pm:_ this is what we get for drafting teenagers. 

_Loras Tyrell 11:16pm:_ i turn 22 in 2 months!

 _Pypar Mummer 11:16pm:_ you are a baby

 _Pypar Mummer 11:17pm:_ TORMUND youre sitting next to him, MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND FIND OUT WHO HES TEXTING

 _Pypar Mummer 11:17pm:_ i dont believe it, giantsbanes fucking asleep 

_Pypar Mummer 11:17pm:_ how can he sleep at a time like this 

_Ygritte Wilde 11:18pm:_ probably tired from actually playing tonight, unlike you 

_Pypar Mummer 11:18pm:_ new rule, no girls allowed in the group chat, idk why i even added you 

_Loras Tyrell 11:19pm:_ guess tollett's gotta go too then huh :'(

 _Edd Tollett 11:20pm:_ oh, fuck off. 

_Grenn Aurochs 11:20pm_ : wait wat happens if we use our phones on the plane

 _Edd Tollett 11:20pm:_ here's a helpful link: www.google.com

_Ygritte Wilde 11:21pm:_ is tormunds head on snows shoulder???

 _Loras Tyrell 11:21pm:_ [popcorn emoji]

 _Pypar Mummer 11:22pm:_ ive analyzed the angle and its very close but not actually touching

 _Samwell Tarly 11:23pm:_ I am taking *everyone's* phones away in thirty seconds!

 _Ygritte Wilde 11:23pm:_ yeah calling bullshit on that one tarly, you cant even make eye contact w me

 _Samwell Tarly 11:24pm:_ I just asked him, and he says he is speaking with a journalist. Happy now?

 _Ygritte Wilde 11:24pm:_ !!!!

 _Pypar Mummer 11:24pm:_ OMG 

_Loras Tyrell 11:24pm:_ [scream emoji]

 _Grenn Aurochs 11:24pm:_ wait wat 

_Edd Tollett 11:24pm:_ holy shit... it IS chaos-tour jon.

 _Edd Tollett 11:25pm:_ don't do it...

 _Loras Tyrell 11:25pm_ : flaming_elmo.gif


	12. Chapter 12

On Thursday, Sansa walks to Kraken's to meet Renly for coffee. She is jittery, even though she hasn't had caffeine yet. She cannot stop slyly checking her phone as she navigates the city streets, biting her lip against a smile like she has a wonderful secret.

(She has not felt like this in so long—that surge of joy at every vibrate of her phone, that urge to sing along with every song on the radio, because the lyrics have new meaning. She did not think she would ever feel it again. If nothing else, Jon has given her this, even if it is on the heels of her life imploding—even if nothing can ever come of it.)

"Well," Renly declares when he sweeps over to her table after ordering, dressed in head-to-toe Kenzo, "you are glowing way too much, given the situation. You are practically at Loras-levels of glow. Something is up."

He hugs her, enveloping her in a cloud of Bond No.9, then pulls back to narrow his bright blue eyes at her. "Actually, what _is_ the situation? I'm just assuming there is one, since you're available at such a ladies-who-lunch time of day."

"There is, you're right," she admits, tucking her hair behind her ears as they settle into their seats.

Her phone pulses with a new text, and she folds her hands around her latte to stop herself from looking at it. There's no guarantee it's from Jon. He only texted once, yesterday—a picture of Ghost by his door, looking out at the yard, with no caption—but she thought of the text so many times that it felt like they were in conversation all day. "It's sort of a long story."

"Uh oh. Hm, hold on a second."

Renly turns his phone off, to her surprise. "There we go—I'm all yours. Tell me everything."

Sansa looks around the cafe. Even though she is at peace with her decisions, she has not actually said them out loud just yet. Saying it out loud will mean her choices are real. "Sansa. What did you do?" he probes, raising his brows.

Time to make her choices real.

"I quit my job."

Renly waits with his arms folded across his chest, studying her calmly, so she takes a deep breath and dives in.

She tells him everything—from how she got the assignment to cover Jon, and her decision to write about Joffrey, to the interview with Jon (leaving out the strange incident on his driveway, but keeping in the fact that she slept in his bed, which earns her a flick of his brows), to her decision not to cover Jon at all—and finally, to yesterday, and all that happened.

Renly's face does not change much as she talks, save for when she mentions sharing Jon's bed. She senses he is monitoring his own reactions, schooling his features, and somehow that makes it so much easier to talk about it: about how Jon makes her feel, about the epiphanies she has had over the last two weeks, about the wrenching feeling she has every time she thinks about her future.

It feels so good, mostly, to talk freely about Jon.

When she is finally done, the patrons of the cafe have changed; it is nearly the lunchtime rush. "So, that's...that," she says. "And now, I have no idea what I'm going to do. I don't even know how to _figure out_ what I'm going to do."

Renly shifts in the wooden chair, brows knit together. He looks out the large window, at the traffic and the sidewalk.

"Oh, Sansa," he sighs at last, shaking his head, and he looks back at her. She notes that he has yet to call her 'Puppy.' He is smiling. "You don't need my advice. Or anyone's."

"Renly, you called me out on needing a new direction after barely knowing me. Jon did too. And meanwhile, it's taken me _years_ to figure out I'm not cut out for this." She toys with her cup. Time to voice the worst thought of all. "...Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Why did it take me so long to understand myself? I thought I was a self-aware person, for the most part."

Renly laughs.

"That's how change works, right? We think things are the same, and they're the same, and they're the same, and they're the same." He gestures as he talks, a rolling motion with his hands, "and then suddenly we're different, and everything is different, right? Not to be totally lame, but it's like when the weather breaks. Like, winter seems endless, the snow looks gross, the weather's horrible, and then suddenly one morning you get up and there are daffodils everywhere, and you're like, what the fuck? When did all this happen? And it was happening all along."

"That's so poetic," she teases, and he throws back his head and laughs again.

"That fine arts degree had to go somewhere," he muses.

A comfortable silence passes as they each look out the window, thinking of snow and daffodils. "You'll figure it out," Renly promises after a moment. "Maybe the next month or two will be hard, but I know you'll be fine."

"I am completely rudderless." She swallows, looking back at Renly. "I don't even know where to start."

"It really doesn't matter," he dismisses with a shake of his head. "We all have to do this every now and then, and it always feels like we're in chaos mode. If you put any effort into it at all, it works out. And anyway, you've figured out your principles, you've got your independence and your integrity. ...And you know what else I know about you?"

"What's that?" She tries not to look too anxious, but Renly is smiling.

"People _respond_ to you, Sansa." He counts off on his fingers. "I liked you right away. Margaery adores you. Loras asks me about you all the time. Brienne would literally murder for you after knowing you for, like, two hours and change. ...And it sounds like you melted Jon Snow's ice in record time, and according to Loras that is no easy task. As in, you're maybe one of two or three people who've done that. Hell, it sounds like even your boss—problematic as she was—genuinely liked you and wanted to be your friend."

She wipes away a tear and Renly discreetly passes her a tissue from a pack in his coat pocket. "Also, now I know why you're glowing like a rom-com heroine," he adds slyly. "And why Snow is apparently so happy. Loras said he's been looking at his phone constantly; he and the boys literally cannot stop theorizing."

"I barely know him," she hedges, trying to stave off the glow that his words give her. "And I still haven't told him I'm not going to cover him."

"I really, really don't see that being a problem," Renly says matter-of-factly. "And it never takes long, does it? When you have that real connection with someone, it just sort of falls into place."

"You had that with Loras?" Sansa guesses with a smile, and he groans and rolls his eyes.

"Yes, and I still cannot believe I had it with a man who un-ironically eats doritos and is too young to remember Myspace."

"Doritos? Really?" Sansa thinks with a pang of Myranda, who has wondered about Loras' skincare routine since he was drafted. She would _love_ to know that he eats junk food.

"Yes, he has the diet of a twelve-year-old in a convenience store who just got their babysitting money—zero impulse control—and I am doing yeoman's work to get him to, like, eat a vegetable once in a while. I want him to still look gorgeous when I'm sixty and he's...ugh, when he's my age. God, that is some horrible math."

He massages his temples. "Anyway, the point being that you should trust what feels right. You obviously have things figured out, even if it doesn't feel like it."

He checks his Cartier watch. "Come on, let's go now, or we'll miss sweaty men ramming into each other, and it's my main form of self care. I'll drive."

As they prepare to leave Kraken's, Renly pauses. "Oh, and you know what? Brienne's idea seems even better now."

"What was her idea?" They shrug into their coats and step out onto the sidewalk.

"Charity benefit next Saturday; the Direwolves have to go, so I have to go, and since I have to go, I'm making everyone I know go. Snow will be there too, even though I'm positive he does not want to go at all." Renly side-eyes her. "...Though if he knows you'll be there, I'm willing to bet he'll feel differently."

"There's no reason for me to go anymore," Sansa dismisses as they walk to Renly's car. He turns to her, looking incredulous.

" _No reason_ for a man who is falling _madly_ in love with you to see you looking all glammed up and sexy? _No reason_ to drink seriously expensive champagne with a man who cannot stop checking his phone for texts from you? Are you _kidding_ me, Puppy?"

"Don't call me that," Sansa says, instead of responding to the rest of it, and Renly groans again.

"No, you're acting like a puppy right now," he says. "Sansa, you're coming and that's that. This is living, okay? You make your mistakes and then you go to the party anyway."

* * *

The Direwolves' practice rink is just outside the city limits, in an enormous, boxy building banked by parking lots dotted with puddles. The snarling wolf logo blazes along its southern wall, a vast reminder of the economic machine that counts on Jon's abilities—and his public image. The stadium workers, the journalists, the manufacturers... it is an entire ecosystem, with him and the other players at its center.

Sansa's fingers are stiff and clumsy as she collects her things. Dread and joy are making her wobbly. She does not want to tell Jon she is no longer covering him; at the same time, she is giddy at the prospect of seeing him, and stupidly hopeful that he might be happy to see her too.

"Here we go. Your hair looks great, stop it," Renly snaps as they pause outside the doors, slapping her hand away from her hair.

Inside smells like bleach and rubber. Sansa follows Renly along a dimly-lit hall with gymnasium flooring, as he seems confident in where they are going. It's less impressive than the stadium, but there is no less fanfare. The walls, from floor to ceiling, are a black-and-white pastiche of images of the players: Jon's face, as tall as she is, glares back at her from under his helmet—a heated, focused gaze that makes her belly clench, every lash and drop of sweat in crisp definition. 

"Here we are... god, I can already hear Mummer. That guy never shuts up," Renly groans as they approach swinging doors. Sansa wishes she had a moment to prepare herself, but Renly grabs her hand and pulls her through the doors, and into the rink.

It's colder than she expected, and so bright that she has to blink as they enter. The soft rush of skates and sticks on ice is a cold, chalky sound, filling the stadium like a frosty wind. Laughter and shouts bounce off the cinderblock walls. Championship banners hang from the ceiling, though they look a little wrinkled and cheap, and in the rows of seating around them, gym bags and coats sit in clumps. 

Just as Sansa and Renly walk up to the boards, three players zoom past, one of them talking rapidly and loudly, mimicking a star from _Real Housewives of King's Landing_ with startling accuracy. It looks like practice hasn't quite started: none of them are wearing helmets, and some players are standing around on the ice in groups, chatting, or sitting by the benches. Dozens of pucks litter the ice around the goal, and—

—And there he is.

Jon's talking to the goalie, Grenn Aurochs, gliding around him in little circles as he gestures. Grenn nods intently, chewing his lip as he listens. Tormund is lingering around them, deep in thought, slapping a puck into the net every now and then. Jon and Grenn ignore him as they talk. A red-headed girl with a haphazard ponytail and a tight Direwolves shirt skates over to Jon, handing him a stick and a roll of tape, and Jon takes it, nodding his thanks to her, before going back to Grenn. It looks like he's mentoring Grenn, from the way Grenn is crouched forward, nodding as he frowns in concentration. 

"Oh, yay. There's Loras," Renly says brightly, as Loras skates past them with effortless grace, his chestnut curls free and flowing enviably. "The guy with the ears is Mummer, Pypar Mummer, and the guy with the long face and bad hair is Edd Tollett." 

Pypar and Edd skate just behind Loras. Pypar is talking, and Sansa realizes he was the one who was mimicking the _Real Housewives_ a second ago. Loras and Edd are clearly not listening to him. 

Renly and Sansa stand by the ice, hands in their pockets as they watch it all. Jon grins at something Tormund says, and her heart does a funny little jump at the sight of it.

(He does look happier. Could it possibly be because of her?)

"Hey, it's that girl—oh my god, wait, Tollett, she's a _journalist!_ " Pypar blurts out as he skates past. "Hey, Snow, is this your journalist?" he yells excitedly across the rink, pointing at Sansa with his stick.

Jon looks up sharply. Sansa waves, but they're too far apart for her to say anything, or to tell what he's thinking. It feels like the whole rink is watching them—Pypar skates over to Loras and Edd and they're talking excitedly, looking at Sansa and Jon, and Sansa feels a bit like when you go to the zoo and the animals peer back at you. Tormund is beaming at her, but the red-haired girl is eyeing her suspiciously, as Jon skates up the ice to them. 

"I'm just gonna go find somewhere else to be," Renly mutters in her ear. Sansa barely processes it.

It's time. 

She fists her cold hands in her pockets and steels her will. She is going to tell him; she is going to cut off this bud, no matter how much it hurts.

The area is suddenly clear, with all of the other players clumped at the other end of the rink, and Renly is gone. Jon slows down as he approaches her, still holding his stick and the roll of tape.

His hair is free of its man-bun; his stubble is growing in again, and the bruise from her shoe is almost faded. He's in a Direwolves jersey, but it looks simpler—it must be the practice jersey—and his silhouette has far less padding. Something about him is adorably boyish at the moment, compared to how fierce he usually looks, and there is a brightness to him, like he is on the verge of smiling. She longs to reach for him.

They regard each other as he bumps lightly into the low wall surrounding the ice.

"Hey," she forces out, her voice catching. His brightness dims.

"Hey," he says cautiously, grey eyes watchful, perceptive.

"I'm, um, not—I'm not here to, like, gather intel," she tries to joke, the words cluttering in her mouth. "I actually wanted to talk to you about something."

He tilts his head, studying her. 

"You have my number," he points out, but he hops over the low wall anyway, never taking his eyes off her.

"Yeah, I sort of felt like this was an in-person conversation."

Why is her voice shaking? Jon leans in and the nearness makes her blush.

"Are you... okay?" he asks in a low voice, and she nods.

"I want to explain, but I don't want you to know," she shoots his own words back to him, trying for levity. He rolls his eyes.

"Now that I'm on the receiving end of that, I see how annoying it is," he mutters. "Come on, let's sit." He sets a hand at her back, guiding her toward the rising benches.

They sit together on the end of a bench halfway up, among the gym bags and coats. His leg brushes hers as they settle, and she flinches, and he notices, and she feels ashamed as she senses the dynamic spinning further out of her control. Jon begins taping his stick, his lovely hands confident and practiced in the motions. "So?"

His voice is taut. He knows this will be uncomfortable, which implies he doesn't want it to be. It's another little way he pulls her back to him—a hand on her jaw, a tug on her shirt, a thumb on her cheek. _Don't go yet._

"So, I quit my job." 

She stares hard at Tormund shooting spare pucks into the goal rapid-fire, a look of satisfaction on his face. The other players are pretending not to watch them; she feels like they are on a stage. "I'm not going to write about you. And I'm sorry for taking up so much of your time. I know it was outside of your comfort zone; I also know I took up your whole Saturday, and a lot of your Sunday. So—I'm sorry for wasting your time, I guess."

"That night was never about the article, Sansa," Jon says. "Let's at least be honest about that."

Her mouth goes dry. She did not expect him to be so blunt. "I didn't ask you to come to my house, and eat dinner with me, so you could write an article about me. And after the first fifteen minutes, I know you weren't there for that, either. This isn't about that."

The awareness of why they both were there, and what they both felt, hangs in the air between them, thick as perfume. It seems so clear, in retrospect, what they were really doing—the push and pull that was happening between the lines, the battle of desire being fought beneath the battle of wills. So far, all has been subtext between them, and now that it is suddenly explicit, she does not know what to do.

"Right. Well." She clears her throat as he shifts in her periphery. "That's it, I guess. And you don't need to worry about the article, anyway. I never gave them my notes. If they ask, I'll say I never took any."

He is staring at the ice, working his jaw. 

"You could have written about me," he says, "if it would have helped. You know that." She opens her mouth to thank him, but he continues. "So what's going to happen with your article on Baratheon?"

"I don't know." She shrugs. "It belongs to them now."

"That's bullshit," he says at once, turning toward her, "that's your life, not theirs. How can it belong to them?"

"I signed all kinds of things when I was hired, Jon. And frankly, I'm not even sure how I'm going to afford _life_ for the foreseeable future, let alone legal help. I have some savings, but they're not infinite. I have to figure out survival first."

Some of the players are pretending to play now. Grenn blocks a shot from Pypar; Loras steals the puck and scores, making everyone groan. They are obviously trying very hard not to look back at Jon and Sansa.

"You must have really wanted to leave." 

"It was time. It had been a long time coming, to be honest," she admits. "I'll be fine."

"Yeah, you will." The simple confidence in his voice tells her he truly believes it, and the matter settles between them. But it's not the real question, and Sansa sees now just how right Renly was. The article was never going to be a problem. This was never about that.

Now the tide is turning; she senses they are about to venture into newer, more dangerous waters, and she has no sail.

"My bed seems pretty empty, ever since Saturday."

His voice is low and soft. Intimate and private. He's not looking at her, not touching her, but he is pulling her to him all the same. A flare of heat washes over her, and her skin tingles all over, even at her hairline, with awareness of him. 

"I only want to be in your bed if I'm in your life."

"You think I'm just looking for a fuck?" He's testing her again, provoking her in little ways, and she can feel him looking at her, trying to read the effect he has. Push and pull, test and provoke. 

"No," she admits, "but I'm not a decorative object, to be put in one part of your life and kept there. That's how it was with Joffrey. I'm not doing it again. If I'm going to be in someone's life, I want to actually be in it. You would have to let me in."

"I could say the same back to you," Jon fires back, his voice still low and private. "You haven't exactly let me in either. You didn't tell me anything about Baratheon, about your family, about any of it."

She looks at him and immediately wishes she hadn't, because he's close enough to kiss. The focus of his grey eyes on her face is scorching. She is no longer cold at all.

"I would," she promises, "if you did."

It is a face-off, and this one, she thinks, she is going to lose.

"Sansa," he begins desperately, "it's not that I don't want you there, it's—it's that the rest of my life is..."

He goes back to taping his stick, and she cannot help but notice how sweet the back of his neck looks, his dark hair curling against the nape, his jersey laying against his skin. "It's not worthy of you, alright? It's complicated, and unhappy. I let you in more than I have anyone else, even my ex-girlfriend, and it's as far as I can go."

"That's not very far. Even if it's not your intent, it would basically be just—" she swallows, "—just fucking, ultimately."

"SNOW!"

A heavy-set man, who looks like he consumes too much beer and sodium, is waving at them from the ice. "Practice is starting. Now."

"Thorne," Jon mutters in disdain. He ignores Thorne, who purples with anger. Margaery did tell her that it is Jon who runs the show, and she sees that now. Thorne's anger is utterly impotent against Jon's will. "Look, I can't, okay? I can't expose you to my life."

(Why does this hurt so much?)

(It's not like they really know each other.)

(Maybe she was right all along—maybe that part of her was never meant to come back.)

She fists her hands.

"Then there's nothing else to say," she says lightly.

"What?" His face contorts in anger, like she's slapped him, but Thorne calls his name again. He's approaching, skating toward them with blunt movements. Tormund glides in front of Thorne, trying to intervene, but Thorne ignores him. "Hold on," he snarls to Thorne, and the man bristles with anger, but Jon does not seem to care. "Are we seriously leaving it like this, Sansa?"

He's twisted toward her, and she crosses her arms over her chest. He's so close, and the way he's twisted on the bench, it would be so easy to lean into him, her shoulder to his hard chest; it feels almost inevitable.

"If we went for it," she begins. His eyes darken, and heat pulses at her center. "I would just be waiting for you to let me into your life. It wouldn't be fair."

They hold the gaze. "I can't do that, Jon. I'd always be waiting, always wanting more from you, waiting for you to give me something you don't want to give."

He bites his lip, then sets his jaw. "So yes, I guess we are leaving it like this. There's nothing else to say."

He looks away, lets out a short breath, and for a moment—a searing, agonizing moment—he almost looks like he is struggling with something. Like he might change his mind; like he might compromise.

And then the moment is gone. 

He gets up, leaving the roll of tape on the bench, and doesn't look back at her. He leaps onto the ice again, ignoring Thorne, and Sansa watches numbly as he skates down the ice with deadly speed. He is in hockey mode, now; it is over. The bloom is cut off at the bud; there will be no daffodils. His teammates skate cautiously around him, watching him with a lion tamer's tension, and practice begins in earnest.

"Sansa?" She doesn't even realize Renly is crouching beside her until his cologne fills the air. "Hey. Come on. That dickhead Thorne just told me we have to leave." He sets a hand on her shoulder, and squeezes gently. 

"I'm fine," she promises him, getting to her feet. She can't look at him. She can't look at anyone or anything too long. As long as she doesn't have to think about it, she's fine. As long as no one says anything about it, she's fine. There is an ache in her chest, a throbbing just where her heart is, but it will be fine. As long as she doesn't think about all of the lovely possibilities she has just cut off at the stems— "Seriously, I'm fine."

"I know you are." He sets an arm around her shoulders as they leave the rink. "Believe me, I know."

* * *

_WHAT THE FUCK!!!!! Group Chat, Thursday Evening_

_Pypar Mummer 10:42pm:_ uh so what the fuck?

 _Pypar Mummer 10:42pm:_ i thought they were totally gonna bang on the bench at first with the way they were looking at each other ... thought it was in the bag! 

_Pypar Mummer 10:42pm:_ and then he comes back to the ice all MURDERY

 _Loras Tyrell 10:42pm:_ idk renly says itll be fine? theyre both just being rly dumb apparently

 _Grenn Aurochs 10:43pm:_ shes so pretty [mind blown emoji]

 _Grenn Aurochs 10:43pm:_ jons being so dum lol

 _Ygritte Wilde 10:43pm:_ no shes not, shes so average

 _Pypar Mummer 10:44pm:_ my dude you have GOT to get over that crush on snow

 _Pypar Mummer 10:44pm:_ havent you ever read hes just not that into you???

 _Loras Tyrell 10:45pm_ : ... have YOU mummer?

 _Pypar Mummer 10:45pm:_ uh yeah duh its got great advice

 _Edd Tollett 10:45pm:_ it's a little sexist. 

_Pypar Mummer 10:45pm:_ no its not, it applies to everyone

 _Pypar Mummer 10:45pm:_ im gonna bring it to next practice for you ygritte 

_Loras Tyrell 10:46pm:_ back to the important matter - renly invited her to that fundraiser thingy next week

 _Grenn Aurochs 10:46pm:_ we have 2 help him guys

* * *

 **Tormund [10:52pm]:** want to talk about it

 **Tormund [10:52pm]** : ?

 **Jon [10:55pm]** : no.

 **Tormund [10:56pm]:** didnt think so

 **Tormund [10:56pm]:** just heard she will be at the charity event in the group chat

 **Tormund [10:57pm]:** so one more shot on goal :-) 

**Jon [10:58pm]:** you didn't just do that.

 **Tormund [10:58pm]:** i did though 

**Tormund [10:59pm]:** dont fuck this one up, crow 


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is for mestra - hope things get better soon! <3

"Margaery. That is—" 

Sansa bites her tongue and prays for patience as Margaery does an excited little wiggle-dance, waving the dress in front of her. The emerald silk glimmers in the light. "That is... some fabric and a skirt," she finishes, when her manners have returned.

Margaery nods enthusiastically, doe-like eyes wide with joy.

"That's what a dress _is_ , Sansa!" She waves the dress by its hanger again, and the lustrous green catches the light as the tulle beneath the silk rustles.

"No, that is just _part_ of a dress," Sansa tries, but her words are drowned out by Margaery's gleeful chattering as she turns around and holds the gown up to herself admiringly in front of her floor-length mirror. It's a lost cause; Sansa is not going to be able to get out of trying on this dress-like-thing, and she sags in exasperation. 

Sansa has always been on the tall and willowy side, but Margaery's calories come exclusively from green juices and vodka-sodas, and that waist is _tiny_. Even the most draconian shapewear is not going to help Sansa fit into that—not to mention the bra situation. Sansa is not even sure that a bra is possible with this dress. 

"You're going to look, like, _amazing_ ," Margaery swoons, twirling with the dress before throwing it at Sansa. "It's almost exactly the same color as those fab shoes of yours, and I love a redhead in green. Ugh, it's just _so perfect_." Sansa tries not to drown in a rustle of heavy emerald silk and tulle as she grapples to hold up the dress. It's surprisingly heavy, as a good gown should be—real silk, complex construction. Sansa has always loved fashion, and has picked up rather a lot from her constant perusals of fashion blogs and her occasional trips through the designer sections of department stores. She does not know what she will ever do with all of this useless knowledge. "Come on, try it on!" 

Sansa emerges from the pile of fabric. Margaery has her hands clasped together. "Oh, you probably want privacy," she realizes with surprising tact, and winks at Sansa. "I'll be right out here. Go on, put it on!"

Margaery slips out of her walk-in closet, leaving Sansa alone among the wall of Louboutins, the shelf of designer purses (she has duplicates of some, in absurd candy colors), the vase of peonies, the tiny, glittering peach-glass chandelier, the pink shag rug. She feels a little like Pinterest has vomited on her, but there is a side of Sansa that loves being girly and feminine, and her inner twelve-year-old is squealing with glee at being surrounded by so much prettiness. There is a tulle section of Margaery's closet, and tulle in outrageous colors—flamingo pink, magnolia, sage green, periwinkle—spills out. And the part of Sansa that spent a paycheck on shoes can name every designer present in this closet, and roughly identify the pieces by season.

But the part of Sansa that has spent the last week scouring the internet for jobs, and staying up to the small hours of the night doing odd contract jobs—blog posts, articles, little graphic design jobs—to tide her over financially cannot help but look around her and calculate all of the money that is just sitting here, so casually. The cost of any one of these pieces would be life-changing to Sansa for the next month, and it is hard not to resent Margaery a little bit. Of course, Margaery is also heavily involved in charity and philanthropy—there are few people more generous with their time and money—and technically, Sansa supposes, she is a charity case right now. 

Maybe, she tells herself, this is a little like pausing in front of the window to admire the green Manolos. She is glimpsing the life she wants for herself. She doesn't have the path yet, but she has some idea of what the destination looks like. Maybe it's silly, maybe it's frivolous. But she has always loved pretty things; she has always loved art. She is happiest when she is surrounded by beauty.

Sansa kicks off her sensible flats and wriggles out of her pencil skirt. She's just come from an interview for a truly odd job that, as best she could tell, was using Twitter to do linguistic analysis for marketing. It was on the outskirts of the city in a rundown area, between a mechanic and a low-cost cell service provider, and everything smelled like soup, and it was hard not to leave the interview feeling a little depressed. She would be lucky to get even that job, and it does not feel much like the first stone on a path to a walk-in closet with a wall of high heels and a vase of fresh flowers.

Whatever. Sansa holds up the emerald dress, knowing it will not fit, and tries to avoid her own reflection in the many mirrored surfaces around her. 

"Well? What are you doing in there—meditation? I wanna see!" Margaery complains on the other side of the door. 

_Contemplating my bizarre existence_ , Sansa thinks, _and how much I would like a map,_ but she doesn't say it. 

"I got distracted by your tulle section," she calls, before stepping into the gown. 

She doesn't have the right bra, or any shapewear, at all—which she is going to need desperately. And her hair is still in its interview-appropriate chignon, and her foundation is a little cakey from the stress of the day, so she is a little afraid to see her own reflection. The dress only has a perfunctory zip to the waist, in the back, that is buried by the skirt's folds, and if she holds her breath she can _just barely_ get it zipped and hooked. The cool silk is sensuous against her bare skin. She has not seen so much of her own bare skin on display in a very long time, and her arms prickle with goosebumps.

Sansa turns to face herself in the mirror, and swallows. "I can't wear this, Mar—"

"—Oh my god, you look so hot," Margaery explodes into the closet, staring at Sansa in shock. "Sansa. _Girl._ I had no idea you were hiding all of that." 

Sansa flushes and folds her arms over her chest reflexively. Having been the tallest and most well-developed fourteen year old in her class scarred her for life. She was already getting leered at by grown men before she even started high school, and the cleavage has not come out since. 

"With good reason. I feel ridiculous," she says as Margaery stares. 

"Okay, hold on." She reaches up and undoes Sansa's chignon. Her hair is twisted and flattened from being pulled back, and it hangs about her shoulders in odd, bent sections. Margaery combs out the pieces with utter concentration and Sansa avoids her eyes. "There we go. Yes. Winged eyeliner?" she breathes to herself, stepping back to survey Sansa. "Yes, winged eyeliner, a rosy lip, major earrings. Done. You're perfect."

Sansa returns the stare.

"Margaery, this dress barely fits. I can barely breathe." 

"Um." Margaery looks down appreciatively. "I'd say it fits, like, really well. Like _really_ well. Sansa!" She slaps her arm. "You're going to, like, make me go through a phase!" 

"That's nice of you to say," Sansa begins, dying of embarrassment, but Margaery just laughs at her. 

"Oh, stop. I'm being a little predatory, but I love a curvaceous redhead, it's a weakness," she confesses. "Let me text Renly and Brienne and tell them we're good to go."

"Um. Good to go?" Sansa asks nervously. 

"Yeah, duh! We have to celebrate your interview and your general hotness, Sansa." She's texting rapidly on her phone. "We're going to Maidenvault for expensive hipster drinks. It's my favorite. Renly says it's too girly for him, but whatever, I love all the pink velvet, and I know you'd love it, too." She holds up her phone to her ear. "Hey Renly! Yep, it's perfect, just like I thought. We'll be on our way in a few minutes," she's saying as she slips out of the closet again. 

Sansa stands, alone, in the emerald gown, and finds herself pulling her own phone out of her sensible leather satchel. No new notifications. She swallows, and stuffs it back in the bag, among her folder of extra resume copies and hand-written notes on the company she was interviewing at. 

(Three nights ago she was lying in bed, staring at Jon's name in her phone and preparing to delete his contact information. It had been late, and she had been thinking, again, of sharing a bed with him.)

(And then three dots had appeared beneath his name, and everything inside of her had lit up like faulty Christmas lights, flickering for a moment as she had waited for a text.)

(But no text had come that night—nor any of the nights since.)

(She still has not deleted his contact information.)

(Just in case.) 

(She knows she should.)

She changes out of the gown, hanging it up carefully in Margaery's closet among her other fabulous gowns. The emerald, she knows, is just a few shades off from her Manolos. It's not quite the right fit, and really, the dress deserves a different shoe—something metallic, something unexpected—but there's a part of her that likes the idea of forcing the Manolos with the dress. It feels like she will be making the dress her own; it feels like she is mid-transformation toward her next self, and that's a hopeful idea. 

So she changes back into her comparatively frumpy interview outfit, puts her hair into a ponytail, and hugs Margaery wordlessly when she leaves the walk-in closet. 

"Oh, _you_. You're just the sweetest," Margaery says, returning the hug. "And also the _baddest bitch_. Rejecting pro hockey players, rage-quitting an unethical job... I still cannot believe you turned down a hookup with Jon Snow." 

They leave Margaery's apartment, and begin walking to Maidenvault. 

"I can't do hookups," Sansa reasons as they walk, Margaery's stilettos clacking on the sidewalk. "It would be fine in the beginning, but I'd always be waiting for him to open up, and he told me he couldn't do it. I'd be lying by omission, saying I was okay with it, and just waiting, the whole time. It wouldn't be fair to either of us."

"Look, I respect it." Margaery links arms with her. "You know I'm sex-positive, but it's only good if everyone's on the same page." 

"Yeah," Sansa sighs, thinking with a pang, again, of those three dots.

What if you're just a page or two apart?

Margaery gives her arm a squeeze. 

"Forget about him tonight, alright? He's gorgeous, and yes, he is a wonderful guy—in so many ways—but he's not the only man out there. And you're making major strides in your career, and that is so much better than any guy."

He's not the only man out there, it's true. She has been reminding herself of this, repeatedly, for the last week. And as she and Margaery enter Maidenvault—a distinctly boudoir feel; it actually is a bit like having a bar in Margaery's closet—Sansa scans the room and tries to pick out men that have any potential to her. It's not that she's looking to meet someone right now, but she wants some proof that her interest can be piqued by someone else. She is driven by hope, set aglow by romantic possibility, and all she needs to forget Jon is to see the possibility of some new story unfolding. 

And the bar is full of handsome, polished men, any of whom might be a love interest. But in the end, Sansa spots Renly and Brienne already at a booth in the back—Renly is looking disdainfully at his fizzy pink cocktail in a cranberry-glass coupe; Brienne has what Sansa guesses is a soda—and she decides to just enjoy _right now_. 

So she slides in next to Brienne, and as Margaery and Renly gush about their respective outfits for the gala, Sansa asks Brienne to give her her perspective on the Direwolves' defense. Brienne swells with delight before launching into a quiet but fevered description, and Sansa sips her own girly drink, and listens to Brienne, and smiles when Renly takes a sly picture of them. He winks at her, lowering his phone; Brienne has not noticed and has moved onto dissecting Edd Tollett's and Pypar Mummer's superior defensive abilities. She courteously tries to avoid mentioning Jon, but of course, it's unavoidable, and every time his name comes up, Sansa feels herself light up again. 

She takes out her own phone and brings up Jon's contact information, pretending to check a notification as Brienne talks. 

As much as Jon Snow sets her imagination alight—he is the forest; he is the narrow, curving alley at night which begs exploration; he is the wooden door hidden by vines—she is Sansa Stark, after all, and she cannot help but hope. She would destroy herself with hoping for more from him. She would find magic in every pause, every unanswered text, every lingering touch after sex.

He told her very straightforwardly that he could not give her more—not now, not ever. She must respect what he wants, but she also must respect herself. 

Surrounded by her new friends who clearly love her and want the best for her, Sansa finds the strength to delete his contact information. She is done with forcing things that are not working for her; she is done with compromise; she knows that the old must be cut away completely, sometimes, to make room for new growth. 

"You've got a mysterious smile," Renly observes as she slips her phone back into her satchel. "Sort of sad and wistful, but also secretive... like you had an affair with a spy, or secret agent, and you've just found out he was killed in action," he says analytically. Margaery laughs as Brienne massages her temple. 

"That would make her smile?" Brienne questions, and Renly rolls his eyes. 

"You know what I mean—like a fond but tragic smile. Like she's remembering secret rendezvous in posh hotels in Essos, passionate nights in Braavos..." Margaery is giggling as Renly talks, and Sansa finds herself giggling too. 

It will be alright, she tells herself. 

* * *

**Renly [7:57pm]:** u get the pic i sent???

 **Loras [7:58pm]:** yup thats such a nice picture of sansa and brienne!!

 **Renly [7:58pm]:** brienne has literally been talking sports for the last hour to sansa 

**Renly [7:58pm]** : like i timed it 

**Renly [7:58pm]:** girlfriend has not taken a BREATH

 **Loras [7:59pm]:** lol sansas so nice 

**Renly [8:00pm]:** mind sharing all that with a certain captain?

 **Renly [8:00pm]** : relevant to his interests methinks... 

**Loras [8:00pm]:** sure ill put it in the group chat 

**Renly [8:01pm]:** he's not coming out with u guys tonight?

 **Loras [8:01pm]** : no he said he was busy w something

 **Loras [8:01pm]:** was kinda weird about it tbh 

**Renly [8:01pm]:** um. sketchy?

 **Loras [8:02pm]:** a little yeah 

**Loras [8:02pm]:** it seemed like tarly was involved too 

**Renly [8:02pm]:** the media guy???

 **Loras [8:02pm]:** yup...somethings going on, dunno what.... chaos tour continues!

 **Loras [8:02pm]:** flaming_elmo.gif

 **Renly [8:03pm]:** u know i dont get that gif babe

 **Renly [8:03pm]:** what time home?

 **Loras [8:03pm]:** p late... mummers gonna confront ygritte for how aggressive she is w snow 

**Loras [8:03pm]:** its like an intervention i guess?

 **Renly [8:04pm]:** yikes... 

**Loras [8:04pm]:** shes totally gonna punch him in the face and i gotta see it 

**Renly [8:04pm]:** such a supportive friend ;)

 **Loras [8:04pm]:** look ill defend him.. i just wanna see her try 

**Renly [8:05pm]:** alright just make sure u dont get punched, u know u get fighty when u drink 

**Loras [8:05pm]:** yeah yeah... love you, see you at home 

**Renly [8:05pm]:** love u too xoxox 

* * *

**Tormund [10:45pm]:** cute pic rite?

 **Jon [10:45pm]:** ?

 **Tormund [10:45pm]:** i know you saw it dont lie :-)

 **Jon [10:45pm]:** yes, very cute. 

**Tormund [10:46pm]** : how did it go?

 **Tormund [10:46pm]:** tarly helped?

 **Jon [10:47pm]:** it's fine. he helped a lot. 

**Tormund [10:47pm]:** thats good. asking for help is good sometimes rite?

 **Jon [10:47pm]:** jesus what am i supposed to say to that? 

**Tormund [10:48pm]:** well your supposed to agree but i know you take time on this stuff 

**Tormund [10:48pm]:** stubborn as fuck... always have been 

**Tormund [10:48pm]:** see you saturday

* * *

 **Ygritte [1:02am]:** hey 

**Ygritte [1:02am]:** why didnt you come out with us tonight

 **Jon [1:03am]:** hi, ygritte. it's pretty late - i will see you tomorrow at practice. 

**Ygritte [1:03am]:** everyone said you were busy w something 

**Jon [1:03am]:** yes, i was. i will see you tomorrow. 

**Ygritte [1:04am]:** seeing disney princess? 

**Jon [1:04am]:** not sure what this means. go to sleep, ygritte. 

**Ygritte [1:04am]:** you know... the redhead. the journalist? 

**Ygritte [1:05am]:** i was hoping to see you tonight... 

**Ygritte [1:05am]:** im not looking for a relationship either you know... just gonna put it out there

 **Ygritte [1:05am]:** could be alot of fun?

 **Jon [1:21am]** : thanks for texting. i think you should drink some water and get some sleep. i will see you tomorrow at the rink. 

**Ygritte [1:22am]:** hung up on disney princess???

_[Jon is typing...]_

_[Jon is typing...]_

_[Jon is typing...]_

**Ygritte [1:45am]:** snow?

**Author's Note:**

> (ps - blame redbelles and [her delicious gifset she made for me](https://redbelles.tumblr.com/post/642064443624275968/no-one-loves-sidney-crosby-quite-like-hockey-media) )


End file.
